Eberron: Welcome to the Jungle
by OKShark
Summary: A sequel to The Rising Mists. Our band of heroes must journey deep within the wilds of Q'barra in search of a hidden talisman of untold power. Along the way they'll meet Lizardfolk, find ancient ruins, and probably bicker pointlessly about something inane
1. Foreward and Interesting Facts

Author's note: I am providing a quick primer on Eberron for any who might not be familiar with this world. Hopefully I have been descriptive enough that you'll still be able to muddle through my stories without reading this information, but if you run across any term you don't know, check back here. If the world sounds interesting, I encourage you to go find a copy of the Eberron Campaign Setting, or just read some of Keith Baker's Eberron novels. It's a cool, fun world.

* * *

Eberron is a world in which magic has been tamed and advanced to the point of replacing technology. Magewrights work tirelessly at powerful creation forges, turning out everburning lamps, healing draughts, and even the Warforged: golem-soldiers made of living stone and metal. The continent of Khorvaire, the main continent of Eberron, is criss-crossed with railroad tracks on which fantastic, elementally-fuelled Lightning Rails carry goods and passengers all over the world. An information network made up of crystal balls and whisper-stones allows for the free flow of news and stories across the world, and there is even an international newspaper: the Korranberg Chronicles. In the last few years the inventors of House Cannith have even discovered how to build grand flying airships.

Eberron is also a world at war. Civil war has gripped the grand nation of Galifor for nearly a century, splitting it into five lesser nations and numerous splinter territories. Generations have been born and died knowing only war, and many fear that if peace does not come soon, it may destroy the continent. Nations, sickened of sending their brave boys and girls into the grinder, have lately taken to employing vast armies of loyal, intelligent living golems called Warforged. The living constructs are little more than slaves, fighting and dying loyally for any faction that can afford them.

* * *

The five nations of Eberron are:

**Aundair**: a haughty nation famed for its arcane libraries and ample farmland. Aundair has used the war to settle a longstanding grudge with Thrane and Breland.

**Breland**: a cosmopolitan, democratic country whose economy is based on trade and manufacturing. The Brelish navy is larger than most and, until recently, they supplemented their forces with goblinoid mercenaries and monsters.

**Cyre**: the center of art, fashion, and invention for much of Khorvaire. Also literally the center of Khorvaire, Cyre, surrounded on all sides by enemies, has suffered the worst under the war. Only their technological edge, including masses of Warforged infantry, and a core of seasoned veterans has allowed them to survive.

**Karrnath**: a cold, regimented country with a historic tradition of military conquest. Karrnath is a land of dark secrets and strong fortresses. In Karrnath, even the dead defend the fatherland, and the ranks of the Karrnathi infantry are supplemented by skeletons, zombies, and other undead warriors.

**Thrane**: The holy land of Thrane is the home of Eberron's newest religion, the Silver Flame. At their capital of Flamekeep, a divine pillar of holy fire makes its commandments known to worshipful apostles by possessing the body of a young girl, the Keeper of the Flame. Thranes fight with discipline and bravery, faithfully defending not only their nation but their god.

Additionally, Khorvaire is home to the Dragonmarked Houses: powerful international guilds that have used ingenuity and magic to gain a virtual monopoly in their fields of expertise. House Cannith, for instance, is the last word in the creation of magical weapons and vehicles. House Orien controls the powerful Lightning Rails that allow passengers to cross the continent in a matter of days. House Phiarlan is holds sway in the field of entertainment (and espionage, but few know that), House Deneith provides bodyguards, House Sivis relays messages magically, House Lyrandar runs elementally powered ships and airships, etc. The guilds have a policy of strict neutrality towards all sides in the war.

* * *

In addition to the new factions and nations, there are also a few new races that make their home on Eberron. As well as the regular assortment of elves, humans, dwarves, Halflings, and Orcs, there are also Shifters, Changelings, Kalashtar, and Warforged.

**Changelings** are the descendants of humans and doppelgangers. They possess limited shapeshifting power, allowing them to alter their appearance and disguise themselves as nearly anything with two arms, two legs, and a head. In their natural form they have gray skin, white hair, white eyes, and faces that look human but lack definition. Changelings are widely distrusted, and no one is sure exactly how many of them there are scattered throughout the world. They tend to be politically and morally neutral, and often sell their services to the highest bidder.

**Shifters** are the descendants of humans cursed with Lycanthropy. While not actively able to turn into were-beasts themselves, they possess subtle animalistic characteristics; they often have pointed teeth, pointed ears, oddly colored eyes, and/or excess body hair. Many consider them wild and barbaric, and, indeed, shifters often prefer to live out of doors or close to nature. In times of stress or anger, shifters can call upon their were-beast heritage to become stronger, faster, and more dangerous for a short time.

**Kalashtar** are psionic human hosts to beings from the Realm of Dreams. They look like beautiful, elegant humans. Kalashtar are generally good natured, if aloof, and nearly always possess some form of psychic power. Little is known of the Kalashtar, or the strange, exotic continent across the sea from which they hail.

**Warforged** are durable stone, wood, and metal golems created for the sole purposes of fighting in war. They are tougher and more enduring than their human counterparts: they do not sleep, eat, breathe, rest, or complain. Warforged have a featureless humanoid form, with glowing eyes and a single rune inscribed on their forehead. They are servants and slaves to anyone with the money to purchase them. Warforged possess free will, but are largely unused to the idea of freedom. The subject of Warforged autonomy is currently the most hotly debated topic in Khorvaire.


	2. Chapter 1:Wherin a duel is fought

Sweat.

Sweat got everywhere, eventually. It soaked her shirt and left damp stains under her armpits. It ran in rivulets down her nose and between her breasts and into places ladies didn't comment on. It made her hair into a tangled, greasy wreck, and when she slung her head to keep it out of her eyes, it spattered in thick drops upon the ground. When you live on a ship's deck, you live under the sun; on a day like today, sweat became your entire world. It was the third day of the month of Dravago: late spring, but it could have passed for midsummer.

Sixty seven days since the end of the world, and counting.

Neana studied her opponent. Lieutenant Razze was a natural duelist and a deadly fighter, but you would never know it from his boyish face and unscarred skin. That handsome body was on display today; the overbearing heat meant that both duelists were wearing as little clothing as the naval uniform regulations would let them get away with.

For Neana, this meant a grey cotton undershirt and loose, baggy pants in Cyran blue and green. She had her long brown hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, to keep it out of her eyes, and also to free up her legendary stare. She had been told that her deep blue eyes were "piercing" or "haunting" or just "creepy as all get out." She favored her opponent with her best withering glare. It didn't seem to be working.

The cocky half-elf crossed his rapier and dagger in a fancy salute, smirking. He brought his weapons away and down, into a defensive stance: The Dancer. Nimble, balanced, and easily reverts to offense. "Ready?"

Neana wriggled her toes against the wooden deck, feeling the grain. Sweat had even made her feet slick and her footing slippery. She choked up her grip on her sword and bent her knees into a half-crouch: Stonefoot stance. Stable, but slow to counterattack. "Take your best."

They circled each other warily. Each probed the other's defenses with their eyes alone, searching for a weakness. Master Dorak had told her that, for the greatest swordsmen, the entire duel took place in the eyes and mind. He said he had witnessed the last fight of Tak Vurlnik, the greatest Hobgoblin blademaster to come out of Darguun for centuries, in a basement arena in Atur, where blood-duels were still begrudgingly tolerated. The aging gobbo had agreed to fight a grey-haired elven sellsword named Jherras one last time before he departed to Volaar Draal, to live out his retirement and eventually be buried in the tombs of his ancestors. The two had been old friends. Dorak claimed that the fight had lasted sixteen minutes and two seconds: one minute spent in prayer, fifteen minutes spent studying each other's stance, once second for their blades to meet, and one second for one of them to fall. The fight, the crotchety old dwarven master-at-arms had explained to her, had taken place entirely inside the two men's heads. The bloodletting was only a formality.

Neana privately considered this to be bullshit, but it had a sliver of truth. She took her time, studying her opponent, evaluating his movements. Razze was a flashy fighter, a graceful swashbuckler. Physically weaker than her, but agile and cunning, and totally in his element right now. He favored counter attacks over attacks, and, unlike most lightweight fighters, he favored stable, immobile stances over quick-footed, mobile ones. He was fast with those little needles of his. If she gave him time to plant his feet, charging at him would be like running head first into a meatgrinder. She needed to throw him off balance to have any chance against him.

"Nice shirt," she said. Two blade-lengths between them now; her two handed sword had superior reach, but only barely.

"Thanks," he replied. Razze was wearing his usual; ruffled silk, unbuttoned, the better to display his abdominal muscles. The boy kept himself fit. "I'll give you the name of the tailor."

She smiled. "Don't worry about it. Probably dead now, anyway."

Razze winced, and she had him. She covered the distance in two steps, blade outstretched. Razze's moment of grief had been a ploy – he snapped out of it instantly, raising the tip of his foil – but she had anticipated his anticipation and slapped it aside with her falchion. That left only his dagger to deal with. She shifted the angle of her blade, striking downward, turning an awkward parry into a vicious gut dissection, and her sword met his dagger only inches away from his vainly toned abs. Try as she might, she couldn't find an angle to stab him. With a flourish, Razze extracted his swords and danced away.

He nodded respectfully to her. Neana curled her lip and charged again.

He caught her by surprise this time; what had looked to be a Diamond Hand high-guard stance turned out to be the prelude to an overhead stab. Neana was forced to throw herself out of the way as the tip of his dagger passed within an inch of her face. She had intended to attack with a wide, sweeping cut but now she was off-balance. She took one hand from the hilt of her sword to steady herself against the deck, and that's what finished her. Razze spun, reversing his grip on his dagger, and he stabbed her in the chest.

It hurt. A lot.

"Ow. Look at that. Right in the tit." Neana grumbled. "It's already bruising." Razze's "dagger" was a short wooden belaying pin, his "rapier" a ball-tipped practice foil. Neana's own weapon was a weighted wooden training sword.

Razze had gracefully followed through on his thrust, pivoting on one heel as he tucked the belaying pin into his belt and sheathed his rapier in a single fluid motion. He ended with his back to her, and she mean-spiritedly considered kicking him in the back of the knee. "Okay, class: what did the Lieutenant do wrong?" He asked.

"Let you convince me to take off my armor?"

"Yes, but after that?"

"I agreed not to fry your skinny ass with magic?" she groused.

"Sure, but after that?"

"She lost her balance?" someone asked. Neana had been in enough classrooms to recognize the tone, trepidation mixed with a desire to please, but she wasn't used to it coming out of the mouth of a battle-scarred veteran.

"Good!" Razze opened his hands with a flourish. "Correct, she lost her balance. Worse, she over-corrected and used her hand to catch herself. Without two hands on her sword, she couldn't parry effectively."

"I could have if you weren't so freakish quick," she muttered.

Razze ignored her. He might not have heard her; Neana couldn't speak above a whisper without straining her throat, the result of an old wound. He raised a finger and put on his best professor-ish manner. "Balance is the most important principle for us. Infantrymen can take the ground for granted, but you're marines. Your battlefield is in constant motion, and that's on a becalmed sea. In the middle of a raging storm, the deck can become a wall and the railing your floor at a moment's notice. You have to be prepared for anything. Your nerves have to be as steady as a rock, because the ground won't be. Your feet have to instinctively reposition themselves from instant to instant, without thought or hesitation. And that means you have to be dexterous and quick, like a cat. I don't care if some of you are part orc: brute strength alone is worthless."

Some of the audience nodded sagely, some of them looked speculative, others skeptical. Their little duel had drawn quite a crowd: all the Mother Bear's marines and archers and many of the regular sailors had stopped to watch the two First Swords spar. It wasn't every day you got to see two superior officers go at it, or two master swordsmen duel. The duel had been Neana's idea, partly to break the endless tedium of shipboard life, but mostly because she hadn't gotten a chance to murder any Valenar elves on the long voyage to Q'barra. She needed violence. Turning it into a training exercise for the crew had been Razze's idea, as had the restrictions on magic and armor. Neana had grumblingly agreed, for the sake of safety, even if it put her at a disadvantage versus the agile fencer. Anything was better than sitting around and watching people stare at the List.

"Now I'll show you a few good combat forms you can use to maximize your natural equilibrium. If I can get a volunteer? Marcus!" He barked at one marine who had been whispering to another. "Looks like you just volunteered. Pay attention when your First Sword is talking to you!"

Neana ignored the instruction and turned her back on the crowd. She didn't share the other half-elf's natural love of teaching. She fought to win, not to show off her skill. Especially when the sun was trying to kill her. She found her canteen on a nearby railing, but when she brought it up to her lips, it turned out to be empty.

"Here!"

Another canteen sailed through the air to land at her feet. Neana glanced up to see a Changeling sitting above her, crouched in the ship's rigging. Sam gave her a wave and dropped the fifteen feet to the ship's deck with a nimble leap.

"I liked your mock combat. It was very dramatic." Sam smiled. "Shame about the end, though."

"Yeah, well… If I had my breastplate and my spells, he'd be a charred smear on the ship's deck. What kind of soldier fights half naked like this?" Neana grumbled.

"I do," Sam said. The Lieutenant could change her form to look like anyone, but today she was wearing her true face: the gray skin, white, pupil-less eyes, and thin, smooth features that betrayed her Doppelganger heritage.

"You're an archer." Neana bent down to pick up the canteen, and upended its contents into her mouth. Half the water missed, and splashed all over her chin and face and hair to run in rivulets down her body: damn, it felt good. "If someone can reach you to stab you, I've already failed at my job."

"True." Sam mused. Sam was the Bear's First Bow, in charge of all the archers. She shared leadership duties with Razze, the ship's First Sword, who was in charge of all the marines. "So, Lieutenant, I have to ask: why aren't you assisting our handsome First Sword in his instructional duties? It might help you make friends with the crew. You've been here two months and you've barely spoken two words to any of the men. I know that they'd like to get to know you better. You know how they get about female officers; especially ones who have just poured water all down the front of their shirts."

Neana threw the canteen at her friend and followed it with a dirty look. She held up a hand, ticking off the fingers. "Three reasons. First: yuck. You," she shifted her eyes, making sure no one was near, "of all people should know how I feel about men. They're a nuisance. Not interested. I can't believe how few female crewmembers this damn ship has."

Sam nodded solemnly. "It's a regular ten-foot-pole party."

"Exactly." On Neana's home ship, the Dire Kitten, there were almost as many women as men on the crew. Every officer was female as well. It dated back nearly a decade to an obscure run of bad luck that claimed the lives of a captain and a succession of first officers, all men. Sailors being a superstitious lot, they had gotten it into their heads that the ship was cursed for male officers, and only women had been transferred to command it from then on. They had even rechristened the ship: it had once been known as the Jasper Crown. "Where was I? Oh. Second: I don't need to get to know them, because they aren't my crew. We made it to Q'barra safely, so I'll be transferring back to the Kitten any day now. You can have your ship back."

"And my cabin?"

"Yes…" Neana hesitated. Sharing a room, even a tiny, cramped bunk in the stern of the ship, with Sam had been a bittersweet experience. On the upside, there was the sex, and lots of it. Military fraternization was most definitely frowned upon, and so the two occasional lovers had been used to grabbing a night together when their ships met for the intermittent resupply, or staging covert trysts during a shore leave. Suddenly, they had been thrust into a confined space together for two whole months, and the results had been… exhausting. On the other hand, she longed for some solitude. While Sam might be a tolerable girlfriend in short doses, the Changeling's chipper, melodramatic behavior had soon proved to be cloying. You grew sick of anyone after being trapped in a cabin with them for months on end. Especially a snorer.

"What's the third reason?"

Neana lifted her chin and ran a finger along the thick ridge of scar tissue that circled her neck. It had been more than thirty years since her throat had been slit. "My voice. Sounds like gravel. I can't speak above a strangled whisper. I can't exactly address a crowd, can I?"

"Oh." The changeling looked nonplussed for a moment. "Would you believe that sometimes I forget about that? Just used to it, I guess."

"I'll bet. The rest of your crew seems to use it as an excuse to ignore me. What's your pretty-boy First Sword doing now? Explaining the fine art of underwater knitting with those little needles he calls blades? Teaching them how to buckle swashes?"

"You're just jealous," Sam teased. "Speed, agility, and skill will always win out over brute strength, armor, and… skill."

"Feh. In your head, maybe. I'll put my faith in forty pounds of steel and my good right arm."

"You know, this whole training exercise was a good idea," Sam said, suddenly serious. "The crew has been getting antsy all week, with nothing to do but sit and gamble and read the List. They need something to take their minds of their troubles. Something that isn't morbid and depressing."

"Like violence?" Neana snarked.

"Whatever. Watching you two fight is a hundred times better than staring at the same names for the thousandth time and praying that they'll add some new ones today."

The List. What had begun as two hastily scribbled pages nailed to the side of the mizzen-mast had grown to five dozen sheets of paper, wallpapering the lower section of every mast and the walls and doors of the crew quarters. Every sheet was painstakingly penned in neat, gnomish handwriting; line after line of names and locations. The List of Survivors.

Neana was used to seeing lists of casualties following major battles in the Great War. As soon as the ship pulled into any port large enough to support a House Sivis waystation, a scroll would make the rounds after sundown, passed hand to hand by candlelight as each crewman furtively checked to make sure that no one they knew had met the Keeper. It was a strange, guilty feeling to pick up a piece of paper and pray to see only strangers' names, like wishing them dead. Well, not this time. There would be no list of casualties for The Day, no obituaries in the Korranberg Chronicle; there wasn't enough paper in the world. It was easier, and smarter, to make a list of the living instead. That list was now seven thousand names long, and counting, as Sivis field agents traveled from refugee camp to refugee camp hunting down survivors. Seven thousand, out of what had once been the third largest nation on Khorvaire.

One and a half million dead. It was just a number.

The Mother Bear and the Dire Kitten had escaped the doomed town of Seaside barely minutes ahead of the strange, gray, glowing mist that teemed with indescribable monsters. They carried with them a few hundred civilians, crowded onto a few dozen salvaged merchant ships. The two heavy dromonds had expected stiff fighting as they rounded the Valenar peninsula, whose waters were traditionally claimed by the _Valaes__Tairn_, fierce elven mercenaries. Neana was disappointed to find that the Valenar elves had called the majority of their forces to the mainland, to defend against the gray mists that threatened their borders. She had been hoping to kill some elves. Instead of a tough battle, they had been harassed by only one Valenar cutter, and the Bear's archers, led by Sam, had quickly driven the tiny ship away. Boredom, fear, and hunger had been their greatest enemies on that long, sullen voyage. Supplies ran short, and there was nowhere to restock their stores; they found water aplenty along the lush shores of Valenar, but no one dared forage in the thick, shady forests further inland. The woods were full of elves, and worse.

For Neana, it was two months of unrelenting boredom. She had no real duties: Razze handled the training and commanding of marines on his own boat, and Captain Klein wouldn't let her transfer back to the Kitten. The Kitten's main mast was still too badly damaged to give her much maneuverability, so in a fight the Bear would have to bear the brunt of the offensive. Neana, as the most battle-tested officer, was needed on the front lines.

Only it turned out that there were no front lines. She spent two dull months practicing sword katas, polishing swords and armor, sipping tepid water, eating scraps of dried jerky, and secretly screwing her girlfriend in their cabin every night. In desperation, Neana had even taken to helping the ship's chaplain tend to the sick and wounded civilians, to help halt the spread of dysentery and scurvy. It only took a few days of listening to mawkish, sentimental prayers and cleaning up vomit before Neana's generous impulse dried up. Neana spent the rest of the voyage sulking aboard he Mother Bear.

Worse than the boredom was the anxiety, and the suspense. A ship at sea has no contact with the outside world; they possessed a whisper stone, but until they drew near enough to civilization to make contact with a House Sivis waystation they received no news. No way of knowing who or how many others had survived the disaster, no way of learning whether there was a cause, or even if it was spreading to other nations. Commander Klein drove him battered ships day and night, with no way of knowing if he would even find a civilization to return to.

The effect on the crew was dire; debate raged day and night, between the cynical and the hopeful, the accusing and the penitent. A popular theory was that it had been an attack by an enemy nation, but no one could agree which one. Others claimed that it was divine retribution from the gods, but no side could decide whether the Host, the Six, or the Silver Flame were to blame. Sailors came to blows and were disciplined harshly, leaving the whole crew sullen and close to mutiny. Razze and the ship's bo'sun, a huge half-orc named Tarn, attempted to head off an uprising by working the men all day at trivial, meaningless tasks. Sam organized nightly entertainments with the ship's band to attempt to soothe the mood, and the Captain himself shared every scrap of information he gleaned from his sporadic communiqués with Admiral ir'Matast and the remains of the fleet-in-exile at Thronehold directly with the crew. The missives, delivered by powerful magic over the four thousand mile distance, were rare and filled with little information: a few other ships had survived, the mists seemed to be stopping at the borders of Cyre, refugees had flooded across every open border for roughly thirty two hours, before trickling to a halt, and no one who ventured more than a few miles into the mist was ever heard from again. Ir'Matast was the highest ranking surviving officer, and by her command all ships were to regroup at Thronehold.

After fifty eight days they reached the border of Q'barra, and the tiny port town of Pitchwall. It was a dumpy little mining town where ore was offloaded onto cargo barges, but it had a Sivis outpost, and so it contained the most precious cargo imaginable: news. Captain Klein returned from town with a fat sheaf of newspapers under each arm, a total of eight weeks worth of the Korranberg Chronicles. The crew devoured the broadsides, eager to discover… almost nothing at all. No one had any idea what had caused the tragedy. No group claimed responsibility, not even the usual terrorist organizations or crazy cults. No one had a clue.

The only tangible result of the death of Cyre was an uneasy peace, as every nation and faction withdrew troops to guard their own borders against another freak magical attack.

Oh, and a list of names.

Every day after that added another few sheets to the list. By the time they dropped anchor in Newthrone, the capital of Q'barra, it had already stretched to five thousand. In the week of interminable waiting that followed, while the crew loitered aboard their ships and their two Captains were up at the palace, negotiating with the King to take the refugees off their hands, the list grew by another two thousand. Every addition was greeted with eager ears by all but a few of the crew. Chandrasitar, the ship's Kalashtar navigator, claimed to share a spiritual link with every member of her family; she already knew which ones had survived the Day of Mourning. Captain Klein was shocked to discover that his parents had been traveling abroad at the time, and were currently taking refuge at the Cyran embassy in Sharn. Neana's family had died decades ago in an unrelated tragedy, and, of her small circle of friends, most were Navy, and likely still alive. Sam had a different problem: Changelings switched names as easily as they switched faces, and there was no way of knowing which pseudonyms her family was using at the time of the attack. She claimed that she wouldn't know who was still alive until she made contact with some kind of shadowy "Changeling underground."

Neana was vaguely disturbed by the existence of a Changeling underground.

"Think Klein will be back today?" Neana asked. "We can't have any shore leave until we get rid of these whining civvies, and I'd love to get off this damn boat."

"Maybe," Sam shrugged. "He's dealing with royalty, and that's kind of like speaking to a very slow child. You just have to nod and smile and repeat everything twenty times until they come to grips with the obvious, and do what their advisors tell them to do."

"And you know this how?"

"I've had… encounters with personages of… noble blood." Sam could lie with aplomb – looking you straight in the eye with a wink and a smile – but she grew extra cagey when she was telling half a truth. "In the past. Before I joined the Navy,"

"Royalty?"

"Yep." Shifty eyes.

"Before you joined the military?"

"You bet."

"And the nature of these encounters?"

"Oh, the usual. Business, politics, romance. You know how it is with princes and heads of state."

"Romance. Right," Neana said in her best deadpan voice. "Didn't you enlist when you were eighteen?"

Sam hesitated, and then shrank a foot in height. The years melted off of her, until Neana was looking at a skinny teenage Changeling in a baggy, oversized uniform. Adolescent Sam tilted her head and gave a smile of pure, unfettered innocence. "I was a very precocious youth."

"Eyaagh. Don't do that," Neana grunted. "I have a hard enough time getting used to that when you stay the same age."

"Sorry," Sam said. Neana averted her eyes while Sam shifted back. The half-elf had become almost comfortable with her lover's multiple forms, and these days could nearly always recognize her no matter what the race or gender of the disguise Sam wore, but the sight of a Changeling in mid-shift was still a stomach-lurching sight. The way their faces stretched and melted always put Neana in mind of a particularly bad acid accident she had witnessed in her days at the Magical Academy. Sam stretched and popped her limbs as they returned to their normal lengths. "Is that better?" she asked.

"Much."

"Whatever makes you happy, dear. Oh, look," Sam pointed, "I think Razze is winding up his lecture."

"Good." Neana picked up her practice sword and tucked a loose, wet strand of hair behind one pointed ear. "Rematch time."

Razze was facing the crowd, arms outstretched, punctuating some salient point with a theatrical thrust of his rapier. Neana walked up behind him and slid the wooden blade of her sword past the tip of his ear. To his credit, he didn't flinch. "Ready for another go?" she rasped.

In an eyeblink he had his "dagger" out of his belt and against the edge of her blade, shifting it away from his neck, and he did it all without turning or looking. "Good news!" he announced. "The Lieutenant has graciously agreed to give all of you another practical demonstration."

"Fuck demonstration. I'm going to take that pin and shove it up your ass."

He turned to face her, still smiling. "Can I tell you a secret?"

"Sure."

"I never lose," he whispered. "I'm immortal."

"You're crazy," Neana said, but she approved. Crazy was more fun.

They faced off. She adopted the Adamant Calm stance; a balanced, centered defense. He took up a variation on his previous Dancer stance; blades outstretched, feet apart, ready for anything. They circled, watching. There was no mad charge this time, no brazen rush: they approached one another like old friends. They met in the middle, and steel and wood clashed.

To the spectators, it must have looked as if the two were trying to kill one another. They kept at arm's reach, weapons extended, darting in and out of each other's lines. Again and again her sword lunged toward him – eye, throat, groin, sternum – and again and again he parried with his dagger. His rapier pricked at her from a dozen different angles, but each thrust was rebuffed by the flat of her blade.

"You're doing well!" he said. Her response was a snarl.

It was all a game; every attack was a feint or a probe. She assaulted him methodically and systematically, testing the corners of his defense to make sure that it was really as solid as it looked. Unfortunately, it was. Between his artful footwork and his flashing blades he presented her with an impassable wall. She was doing a fair job of keeping him back as well; she might not have been as fast or as defensive, but any lack was made up for by the strength of her counters. When Razze pressed the assault, nearly overextending himself in his zeal to pierce her defenses, she answered him with a mighty two handed sweep of her practice blade that would have snapped his nose off if it had connected. They might be playing to first strike, but if bones were broken, she wouldn't shed a tear.

"That's a very good defense you're using," Razze said. "What is it, Dwarven?"

"Rage," she replied.

The testing was over. Neana had the measure of her opponent, and it was impressive. Razze was faster than she was and at least as clever. Worse, he was _precise_: like a chirurgeon, his control over his blade was as delicate and conscientious as a scalpel. Moves that looked cocky and flashy and wasteful at first glance were merely feints that masked efficient and pointed strikes. It wasn't a word she associated much with his swashbuckling style of fighting, but she had to admit; Razze was downright methodical. And he was in his element, while she was at a decided disadvantage: she was used to relying on her armor and spells. In any other fight she would have charged in recklessly, relying on her thick steel plating and her defensive spells to save her skin as she channeled raw arcane might down the blade of her sword. Compared to that, this was a stupid, manual, brute force fight the way her stupid, primitive ancestors might have done.

She lunged, and Razze slapped her blade away and danced backwards, daring her to follow. _He's toying with me_, she realized. _If he really wanted to hit me, he would hit me. He's putting on a show._

What were her advantages? She was stronger; much stronger. Her short height, small stature, and elven heritage often caused people to underestimate her strength; her body was full of wiry muscle, honed through decades of martial practice. In most ways that counted, she was stronger than almost anyone else on the crew. Razze possessed only average strength. Moreover, he was young; only twenty three, barely an adult by the standards of their people. Neana was forty seven, and almost two decades of that had been spent in service during the Great War. She was a veteran. Razze was good, but in terms of real life experience, she had him sown up thrice over.

And he was still kicking her ass.

Since he had her beat on speed, she tried skill. She thought back, dredging up the memory of her old Dwarven sword instructor, Master Dorak, and the tricks he had taught her. Lesson one: use the terrain. Neana faded back, putting the tall bulk of the mizzen mast on her right hand side. When Razze pressed the advantage, she darted right, letting his rapier rebound off of the wooden post. The rounded tip of his blade caught the corner of one of the sheets of paper plastered over the mast, costing him a fraction of a second's hesitation. Good enough. Neana reversed her retreat and lunged hungrily… right into the tip of his dagger. Only instinct made her duck and weave under his arm, as she retreated in consternation.

Damn, he was quick.

Lesson two, Dorak had growled, in his gravely old voice: know your enemy. Razze had weaknesses. His defense was focused primarily to the front and up high, protecting his arms and face; he was an expert at taking individual opponents apart, but he had trouble with groups. He couldn't block or stop a blow with the skinny little toothpick he called a sword, but he had turned parrying into an art form. An ounce of pressure, applied laterally, could turn aside the strongest of attacks, and Razze applied his blade like an artist, gently guiding all her swipes and thrusts to the side.

Neana switched up her attacks, aiming low and feinting to the left and right, trying to come at him from angles he wouldn't expect. When he over extended in response to a particularly fast thrust, she followed up by pivoting on her heel, sweeping to the side and trying to cut him off at the knees. Razze smiled and _jumped_, leaping easily over her blade and landing on the balls of his feet.

And, damn it, he even made it look good.

Dorak hadn't been a very good teacher. The ugly old dwarf was half blind and drunk out of his wits most days. No one particularly wanted his advice, which was why a penniless orphan like Neana could afford lessons. Still, in his day he had been a hellion. _Lesson three?_ She recalled his gap toothed grin, and the way his cloudy eyes had shone with malevolence and guile. _Lesson three is, if you can't do something __good or__ smart, do something big and stupid__ instead. __Do something no one would expect. __If you can't win, girl, at least fail with __chutzpah._

Be bold.

Razze pressed his advantage now, seeing her desperation. His blade flashed – stab, stab, stab – and only luck helped her intercept its tip in time. He followed with his dagger, stepping into the breach, and for a moment his hands were moving so fast she was sure there must be three of them. Under his flurry of blows she was forced to retreat, falling back first one pace, then another. Razze advanced slowly and confidently, and when Neana felt her back press against the fore-mast, she knew why. He had her cornered, between a tree and a sharp pointy thing. She pressed her foot against the base of the mast, feeling its solid presence and knowing that she would never dodge to the side in time. He smiled, not unkindly, and readied to lunge.

"Sucker," Neana whispered. Then she jumped.

Even without magical assistance, her vertical leap was impressive: she hurled herself nearly four feet straight up. She twisted her body in midair, situating her feet behind her until she felt them settle against the surface of the mast. Below her, Razze looked up in astonishment. She giggled, and then _pushed_. Her legs straightened, driving her forward: at the same time, gravity finally noticed her and angrily exerted itself.

Like an arrow – like a bolt from the naked sky – she hurled her whole body at the shocked swashbuckler. There was no time for fancy swordwork on her part, and so instead she gripped each end and held it in front of her like an iron bar. Razze instinctively tried to parry, but there was no way a flimsy rapier was going to turn aside a hundred and thirty pounds of projectile half-elf. She struck him across the chest, pinning one arm and knocking him down with her. The force of her leap carried the two of them several feet, where they both landed in a pile in the middle of the deck. They kicked, spun, and separated: trying to stab each other even as they tried to stand. There was no longer any grace to their fighting. Razze's rapier had bent in half, and so he dropped it and threw his wooden dagger into his main hand. Neana's long, curved sword was too awkward to use this close to her opponent, so she settled for fending him off with the hilt.

Razze extricated himself from the scuffle with a graceful flip and landed on his feet. Neana grunted, pulled herself upright, and charged. She lunged, but he parried it with his dagger, just barely. She slashed, and the blade passed within a hairsbreadth of his face. She struck again and again, battering through his defense and smiling as she watched his arm droop and grow tired. There is no good way to defend against a two-hander with a knife, no matter how fast you are. Finally, Neana raised her blade and swept it downward in a vicious overhead smash. The "dagger" was knocked out of his hand with the force of her swing as the wooden sword descended mercilessly towards his unprotected face. Razze flinched.

Neana pulled the cut less than an inch away from his face. "You're dead."

Razze opened his eyes. He froze, staring at the dull wooden edge suspended right between his eyes. Sweat was pouring down his face; from the heat, from exertion, from anticipation of pain. The rest of the crew, who had cheered and heckled and finally had been shocked silent by the sudden reversal of the fight, started clapping. From somewhere up in the rigging came Sam's high-pitched hurrahs. It took him a moment, but he smiled.

"Best two out of three?" he asked.

Her reply was a muttered word and a swift snap of her sword, as she slapped the flat of the blade against his forehead. Razze winked out of existence. Some of the crew gasped, other shouted. From her perch in the rigging, Sam burst into hearty guffaws. Finally a few members of the audience pointed up, to the top of the main mast.

There, in the crow's nest, stood a very confused Lieutenant Razze Nanteel. He shook his fist at her. "Hey, using magic is cheating!"

Neana slung her practice sword over her shoulder and wandered away from the fight. She found a barrel of water sitting near the railing and, without ceremony, she ducked her head into it. Damn heat. Then she sat down on the ground next to it and, as Sam broke out a sack of coins and began settling bets and Razze was helped down from the top of the mast, she began to think.

She was smiling, and it felt strange. She was used to feeling exultation after a battle, and satisfaction, and that delightful physical warmth of having her bloodlust sated, but not usually camaraderie. She wasn't the type to get along well with others, especially not people she had previously unleashed her rage against. In basic training, after a sparring match she had been forced to grudgingly shake her opponent's hand and promise them that there were no hard feelings, but now she was shocked to discover that _there were_ _no hard feelings_. She was even looking forward to another match, and not out of her usual desire to take her aggression out on a socially acceptable target, but because it just seemed like fun. She felt happy. She even had the urge to compliment Razze on his fighting style when he dragged himself down.

Weird.

Her musings were interrupted by a dark shadow that blocked out the sun. She looked up to see a tall, dark-skinned, one-eyed man standing over her. He favored her with something that was either a grin or a grimace. Belatedly, she heard someone shout "Captain on the deck!" Whoops.

"Am I interrupting anything, Lieutenant?" Captain Klein asked.

"Oh, hello, Sir," Neana replied, scrambling to her feet. The Captain stepped off the gangplank and onto the deck of his ship. All around him, sailors began scurrying to find some work to do.

"I hope you haven't damaged my First Sword, Lieutenant. I just might need him."

"Just his pride, sir."

"I doubt that. His arrogance is armor plated," Klein mused. He cupped his hands to his mouth and raised his voice. "Alright you lot! You've got fifteen seconds to get back to work before I start lashing slackers to the bowsprit! And that includes any lieutenants playing monkey on my mast or in my rigging! And get that shirt buttoned! There's an officer's meeting in the galley in fifteen minutes, and I want to see everyone looking sober and upright and fully clothed. Dismissed!"

As Neana started to sidle away, he grabbed her arm. "That includes you too, Neana."

"Yes, sir."

As she hurried away she touched her face. The smile was still there, only now it twisted up at the corners. Klein was acting even edgier than usual.

Something interesting was about to happen at last.


	3. Chapter 2:Wherin the plot is forwarded

Author's Note: a bit late, but here's the second chapter. The third one's almost done, but it's taking longer to get to the jungle than I thought.

* * *

Chapter 2

Captain Klein planted his fists and looked down the length of the table. All the officers from both ships were there, and lined up along their respective sides. It felt good to finally be sitting with her people; Neana took a chair between Katra, the Kitten's First Bow, and Moira, the ship's boatswain. Moira gave her a hesitant smile, exposing only the tips of her fangs. "It's good to see you," the shy young shifter whispered. "I've… we've missed you. The ship isn't the same without you."

Before Neana could reply, she was interrupted by the Captain. "Somebody ask me how my day went." When nobody immediately spoke up, Captain Klein added, "That's an order."

So it was going to be one of _those_ meetings.

"How was your day, sir?" Everyone in the room asked in a bored monotone.

"Lousy! Now ask me why."

In dreary unison: "Why?"

"Because I just got done having the nobility crawl so far up my rectum that they found hidden gold." Klein showed his teeth, and his one good eye was blazing. "We are talking miners with pickaxes here, people. Major excavation going on in my colon. Serious, bearded dwarves carrying hooded lanterns, pushing carloads of ore up steel rails and into my backside. Rocks fell. Men were trapped. Canaries died. And this ongoing ordeal has done the unthinkable: it has fractured my normally calm and cheery disposition. And do you know what happens when my calm gets damaged?"

Neana shrugged. Most of the people at the table looked edgy, or unsure, but Sam and Razze both piped up in chorus, "You spread it around, sir."

"Thank you, children. Yes, I spread it around. When I feel the pain, I make sure everyone gets a piece of misery pie. That means all of you – excepting, of course, my dear lady ir'Arth," he bowed graciously, and Alexia nodded amiably, "get to swallow a big old slice."

Big talk. It rolled over Neana like water. Klein wasn't her Captain, Alexia ir'Arth was. The two of them had returned together straight from the palace; Klein had been in a storm of a mood, but Alexia seemed relieved. Whatever had gone down couldn't have been too bad, or she wouldn't be content to sit idly by and let her oldest friend rage and rant.

"Tarn!" he barked.

The big Half-Orc blinked sleepily. "What'd I do?"

"That's a damn good question. What have you been doing? Certainly not keeping order, or I wouldn't have come back to find my deck turned into a gladiatorial arena."

"Yeah," Tarn chuckled, "that was pretty good." When he noticed Klein's good eye bulging in its socket, he added, "and totally the pointy-ear's idea, boss. Just following orders, I was."

"Whose idea?"

"A training exercise," Razze inserted smoothly. "The Lieutenant and I – that is, Lt. Tacey, not Lt. Sam – thought that the men, being restless from days of enforced idleness, might appreciate a good, old fashioned, militarily approved combat drill."

"Right. And did this combat drill happen to involve the two of you stripping down to your skivvies and smacking each others arses with sticks while my disloyal and disturbingly androgynous First Bow ran the numbers?"

"Those are not… the exact words… that I would use to describe what happened, sir. But that's about right," Razze allowed.

"Neana pulled through on three to one against," Sam added happily. "We made fifteen gold."

"We?" You could have used Klein's voice to shave at this point.

"The ship, of course," Sam replied instantly. She tossed a coin purse on the table. "All proceeds to be donated towards completing repairs on our sister ship, the Dire Kitten." Sam smiled at Captain ir'Arth, and tipped a conspiratorial wink to Neana. Alexia, looking more amused than anything, graciously bowed her head as she picked up the jingling sack of money. "The crew was only too happy to pay up once I told them where their hard earned money would be going."

"Sam?"

"Yes, boss?"

"Cough up the rest of the gold."

Neana was impressed; Sam's innocent smile never wavered for a second as she dug through her pockets to produce another, even larger bag of coins. "Of course, Razze also made good at one and a quarter on the first fight."

"Thank you, Lieutenant, that will be all." He fixed his eye of doom on Neana. "Do you have anything to add to this debacle?"

She shrugged. "I just wanted to hit somebody."

"Of course you did." Captain Klein gripped the table like he wanted to snap it in half. Ir'Arth reached over and laid and hand on his shoulder, and just like that, the anger was gone. It was all for show. "We'll deal with it later, I promise you. But before that, Captain ir'Arth has some news."

"Thank you, Asheel." She patted him kindly on the shoulder, and Captain Klein gave the rest of the room a death look, daring them to laugh at his given name. Alexia cleared her throat. "I am happy to report that King ir'Kesslan has graciously agreed to make accommodation for the civilian refugees. Right now, House Ghallanda is preparing temporary shelters, and House Jorasco is sending healers to the boats to see to their medical needs."

"Gods bless them," Kiana, the ship's chaplain, murmured.

"Definitely," Alexia nodded. "We should all be grateful to our Halfling friends for their much needed charity in the face of this tragedy. As the Voice tells us: 'The flame of righteousness dwells in the smallest heart as well as the largest.'" She smiled. Neana noticed that the less devout members of the crew – i.e., everyone else – avoided meeting her gaze. Vassals of the Flame were just so damned _earnest_ about their faith. "As well, we have spoken to House Lyrandar and House Orien representatives, and they have promised to arrange notes of passage for our people to the temporary settlements in Breland, Aundair, or Thrane, where so many of our surviving citizens have taken refuge. I know that most of the survivors are eager to be reunited with their friends and family. Finally, King ir'Kesslan has agreed to turn over use of Newthrone's sole shipyard, to help in repairing the Kitten's damaged main-mast."

"How much are we paying him for this privilege?" Chandrasitar asked. Kiana and Alexia both gave her disapproving looks, but the Kalashtar mind-witch only raised one delicate eyebrow. Apparently the ability to read minds hadn't left her with a glowing view of human nature.

"Nothing," Klein answered. "But he isn't exactly doing it out of the goodness of his heart either. Ir'Kesslan wants us gone. As of yesterday. And if he needs to lend us a few cranes or a little lumber to make us go away faster, then so be it."

"The King has been most kind," Alexia stressed. "He's certainly shown no hostile intent—"

"He doesn't have to," Klein said. "I know a brush off when I feel the broom smack my ass. He's afraid of us, and the sooner we're gone, the better."

"He's afraid?" Neana chuckled. "Of us? We barely made it out of Seaside alive. We've hardly got one whole crew between two ships, and the Kitten's still half crippled. What does have to fear?"

"One and a half fully fitted warships is still one warship more than all of Q'barra can field on a good day," Captain Klein answered. "The whole realm only has two real cities in it. They have no army and no navy; just a city guard and a few defensive sea walls to protect the harbor. Sure, they have a flimsy little merchant fleet to keep the pirates in check, but we could tear through that like paper with one good Cyran ship, let alone two."

"Not that we would," Alexia added.

"No," Klein sighed. "Not that we would. But it's what ir'Kesslan fears. It took us two days and a dozen letters sent back and forth between he and Admiral ir'Matast before he would accept that we weren't an incursion fleet. Q'barra is neutral in the war, and he desperately wants to stay that way."

"He thinks we're cursed," Moira whispered. When the table turned to look at her, she blushed a bright shade of crimson and shyly ducked her head. Speaking in public made her uncomfortable; the quiet shifter always assumed that everyone was staring disapprovingly at her fangs, and tufted ears, and the other traits that marked her as not-human. "It's true. I heard people talking about us when I went into town… to fetch new pages of the list. I have… good ears. They said that we were cursed. That we brought bad luck with us out of the mist."

"Well," Klein grunted. "Whatever the reason, he's in a hurry to get us gone. Which puts us in a hurry to get gone. I promised him we would leave port in a week and a half. Which brings me to my next piece of bad news. Moira; in order to get us fully patched and stocked by then I'll need you and Tarn to work the crew in double shifts."

Everyone at the table groaned. Tarn said something guttural into his fist.

Klein grinned. "That better have been orcish for 'Yes Sir, I love the smell of sawdust and pine tar.' Think of it this way, people; every hour you save by working your ass off is an hour of shore leave you get to spend before we ship out. Get me?"

Captain Alexia folded her hands. "Kiana, you and I and Katra will be helping the civilians settle in to their temporary shelters. The people are afraid; they will need guidance, and calm heads."

Klein said, "Right. Tarn and Moira, I'll also need a list of your more… presentable sailors to help with the refugee situation. Any men and women that you think can be depended upon to handle the terrified and the seasick."

Moira nodded vigorously and Tarn grunted. Neana's pointed ears perked up. She shared a look with Sam. That was a whole slew of orders that didn't involve the lieutenants in any way. Something was up.

"Good," Klein said. "Tarn, Moira; inform the crew of what's going on and get those lists to me within the next two hours. If anyone has a problem with the extra work, send them to speak to me." He grinned. "You know how they all love my open door policy on criticism."

"If no one has any other questions, then meeting dismissed." Neana hadn't even scooted her chair back before he added, "Lieutenants Tacey, Nanteel, Chandrasitar and Sam can stick around. I have something I need to discuss with them personally."

"Good luck," Moira whispers to her, and then they are alone.

The four lieutenants all shared a tense look.

Klein sat down with a groan and a sigh. He unfolded a silk handkerchief and swabbed the perspiration from his forehead. He even flipped up the patch of his eyepatch and patted beneath it, giving Neana a glimpse of clean, pink scar tissue. "Relax, relax," he told them. "I'm too tired to shout." Neana looked questioningly at Chandrasitar, who just shrugged. Even after two months on his ship, they hadn't entirely taken the measure of the human captain. Sam and Razze took his word for it; the half-elf leaned back and propped his boots up on the table, while Sam pulled out a small briarwood pipe and tipped a pinch or smoking tobacco into it. From another pocket she produced a Cannith everlighter, and pressed the tiny magic stone into the bowl until it took flame. Neana wrinkled her nose; she despised the bittersweet smell and the cloying smoke. Sam was forbidden from smoking in their cabin.

Klein said, "Alright, folks, here is the real stuff. Alexia and I spent the last two days doing more than bickering with some tinpot King. We kept the entire staff of the local Sivis postal station occupied trading whispers back and forth with Admiral ir'Matast. I don't have time to detail all the," he rolled his eye, "_wrangling_ we had to go through with that woman – all I'll say is, she's more used to barking orders than accepting bad news. The short of it is this: we aren't exactly at war any longer, but this isn't exactly peace, either. Karrnath and Thrane are calling for the surrender and total disarmament of all remaining Cyran forces, but the Admiral is refusing."

"Surrender?" Neana's lip curled involuntarily. Sam puffed thoughtfully. Chandra raised one perfect eyebrow. Razze rubbed the red welt on his forehead ruefully.

"Yes. Well. It isn't going to happen any time soon. The Admiral is dead set against it, and even if she wanted to, she couldn't. It takes a Queen or King to start a war, and it takes one to make peace as well. Or at least someone from the royal family. And right now we're fresh out of royals."

Sam stopped her puffing, horrified at the idea. "You mean none of them made it out? Not one?"

"No. Not one single member of the Cyran branch of the ir'Wynarn's has surfaced since the Day of Mourning. As far as we know, even the distant cousins and the black sheep were in country at the time of the attack; it hasn't been safe for them to travel abroad since Queen Dannel escalated the hostilities with Karrnath. The royal family may be a total loss. We haven't entirely lost hope that some will turn up: Sivis is still struggling to sort through all the names, and it's damn hard to communicate with Breland and the western kingdoms now that there's a huge scar where the middle of the continent used to be…" Klein covered his eye with his hand, and the rest of them had the decency to glance away.

Time was when you would never think of seeing an officer cry. Now you just ignored it politely until it passed. Neana noticed thin tear tracks as the corner of Sam's eyes. The Changeling cried some days for no reason; she didn't even seem to notice she was doing it.

Neana hadn't cried since the death of her parents, nearly two decades ago. She thought that she might have forgotten how.

Klein wiped his palm on the side of his pants. Nothing had happened. "Bottom line, though, is that there is no longer any real chain of succession. And, frankly, of all the nobles so far accounted for, Admiral Sallacia ir'Matast has one of the best claims to the throne, and she shows every sign of intending to pursue it. There are already some rumblings from the other surviving nobles about contesting her assertion. I'm not a genealogist; I couldn't tell you how strong her place in the succession is. I do know that she has control of the Navy; that counts for a lot. So I don't expect her to surrender her swords any time soon."

"So you are telling me," Razze groaned, "that we might be looking at a civil war breaking out, while we're already in the middle of civil war?"

"That's about the long and the short of it."

"Why?" Chandrasitar asked.

"Well, I don't know how Kalashtar do it," Klein began, "but with humans, rulership is handed down according to primogeniture—"

"No, that wasn't my question. My query is: why do we care who holds the crown to a throne that no longer exists? Cyre is dead. No one can rule it any longer."

Even Neana was a trifle shocked at the Kalashtar's cold words. She expected Klein to get angry, or explode. Instead he stared blankly at the mind-witch. No flicker of recognition moved behind his eyes. And suddenly Neana had an intuition to how the rest of their lives would go.

Some things were simply too big to think about, and so you never really thought about them, not really. Infinity. Existence. Good and Evil. You could only hold little bits of them in your brain at one time, and you mulled them over and chewed on them like a dog with a difficult piece of gristle. Neana already had one such impossible thing in her head – the murder of her parents, and the all consuming hatred she bore for all Valenar elves since that day – which is perhaps why she recognized it for what it was while the others did not. That one grisly act had settled down into her life like a catapult stone pressing into the taught surface of a billowing sail. It had warped and stretched the fabric of her personality and her upbringing, making her who she was today. Her childhood, her naval career, her casual bloodlust, even her religion and sex life: it touched every aspect of who she was. She could no longer even think about that moment with anything like rational thought. It just was.

Cyre would be like that, she realized. When it had simply been a nation, it had been something that you could leave, or betray, or move away from. Now that it was only an idea, it had trapped them. There would be no surrender for her or anyone aboard the ship. Even if they survived, lived somewhere else, became civilians; they would still be Cyrans. They would never escape that one single day. One and a half million dead, like a weight on their lives.

There was no world where Admiral ir'Matast _could _surrender, any more than Captain Klein could give up his ship, or Neana could lay down her hate. You didn't ask why these things were true: that was the question you could never ask, because the answer was no answer at all, only weight.

Neana snapped out of her reverie to find Chandrasitar staring at her. It was a strange, troubled look. "I regret asking," she said.

"Regardless," Klein replied. "The Admiral isn't giving up. She has relayed to me, in no uncertain terms, my exact orders. That's where you lot come in. I've got a mission for you."

"Oh, good," Razze smiled. "This sounds fun." He wasn't being sarcastic.

"A mission?" Chandrasitar asked. Every word out of her mouth sounded condescendingly amused.

Klein gave them all a sour look. "I could do with a lot more listening and a lot less yammering." He unrolled a fat, waterstained length of parchment on the table: a map. "Admiral ir'Matast, bless her noble, scheming heart, has made one damned odd request of me. Now, she's apparently something of a history buff, or an amateur archeologist; I ain't sure. But I do know that she has always had a bee in her bonnet when it comes to ancient history. And this stupid, swampy country is full of it. Since we're already here, she wants me to send someone to investigate a set of prehistoric ruins. Guess who just got volunteered?"

"Why?" Razze asked.

"What he said, and also: why me?" Sam added

"You want to me trek though a bloody swamp?" Chandrasitar asked.

"Oh, look: insubordination. My favorite corporal offense," Klein growled. "To answer your questions: I don't know, I don't care, and buy some wading boots. It isn't my job to keep your damn feet dry. Look, this comes straight from the Admiral. She's an… odd… woman, but she's perfectly sane. She wouldn't be asking for this unless it was important. Not that she would deign to tell me _why_ it's important, but it must be. She told me to put my best people on it and, Gods help me, but I'm looking at them. And that means the lot of you get to play jungle explorers."

While Klein was speaking, a certain knowing look crept over Razze's face. "Oh, I get it." He turned to the others. "This is just like in those trashy Stormreach novels they sell in Sharn. The Admiral has probably found some ancient treasure map, detailing the location of a priceless hoard of buried treasure. Gemstones the size of Halfling heads, or golden idols, or a magical crown. You know the drill. And she needs us to swing into danger with a dagger clenched in our teeth to steal the riches from a cult of snake worshippers and bring it back to her so that she can…," he faltered. "Bribe people with it or something, I guess. I don't know what you do with fabulous jewel-encrusted artifacts. "

"Prudently invest it," Sam replied solemnly. "House Kundarak offers very reasonable mixed portfolios."

"Children?" Klein snapped his fingers. "I'm still talking. Amusingly enough, no, this is nothing at all like a cheap romance novel. The ruins you're going to? They've already been explored. Anything of value was carted off to Morgrave University decades ago. Sorry to spoil the fantasy."

"Then why are we going?" Neana asked.

"Because in the ruins is a tomb, and in the tomb is a sarcophagus, and on the sarcophagus are some runes. Your job is to write down the runes. Just take some paper and charcoal and stencil in the outlines, and bring your drawings back. That's it."

"That is all? Then why are we going?" Chandrasitar demanded. "Surely the previous expedition recorded these runes. Why does the Admiral not simply visit a library?"

"Strangely enough, I _did_ think to ask her that question, even with my tiny, human, non-psychic brain. It turns out that the writings of the expedition, along with all the other relics, were housed in the Glass Tower at Sharn. They were all destroyed seventy five years ago in the tower's collapse."

"Cursed treasure," Razze nodded sagely. "Ancient goblin curse. Probably warded by the souls of the damned, bound by chains of agony and duty to guard primeval Imperial relics."

"Then I can only pray to the Host that the curse still stands," Klein said. "Because the four of you are going. Now, the ruins are here," his finger hovered over an unlabeled black dot. It sat alone, in the middle of a swath of unmarked green forest. "It's near the banks of the Crimson River, about thirty miles east of this place right here." He pointed now to the only labeled dot in all of northern Q'barra.

"Is that a city? Kar… Karas.." Sam tried. "I can't say that word."

"Ka'rhashan," Neana said. When everyone turned to stare at her, she shrugged. "It's Draconic. It means… 'clutch-gather' or 'egg-gather' or something like that."

"Well, that's appropriate, seeing how it's home to the largest collection of lizard-men in the whole world. It's the only permanent settlement those savages have; something about a bunch of tribes coming together. Not my problem, now." He tapped the dot. "By my estimates, it's a bit more than two hundred miles from here to Ka… Khrah… Lizard City. I've got a guide who claims that the trip can be made in fourteen days. From the lizard city, it's another day and a half to the ruins – less, if the lizard folk lend you a boat to travel by river – and from the ruins it's a straight shot to the sea. I figure it will take you between twenty five and thirty days to trek through the jungle, search the ruins, and make it to the mouth of the Crimson River. With good weather, and assuming no mutinies, I should be able to get the Kitten fixed and sail both ships around the Q'Barran peninsula in time to meet you there. Any questions?" He sighed. "Yes, Sam?"

Sam lowered her hand. "What do we do after the Lizard folk eat us? Because they're giant lizards, and they eat people. That's what lizard-men do."

"Apparently not these lizard-men." Klein rifled through a sheaf of papers until he produced an ornate certificate, worked with calligraphy and gilded at the edges. Neana recognized a pair of Dragonmark sigils. "Admiral ir'Matast has arranged to hire you a House Tharashk guide to conduct you through the jungle. Tharashk has some kind of treaty with the lizard-folk population that keeps them from getting eaten, and grants them safe passage through contested areas. It extends to everyone traveling with an official guide, so you should be safe."

"How long will you wait for us at the meeting place if something goes wrong?" Neana asked.

"Ten days." The Captain looked grim. "That's the longest that I can afford to wait. Ir'Matast is snapping at the bit to consolidate all her ships at Thronehold. If I don't see you there, or receive word from you, in forty days, I'll have to assume the worst. Any other question? Then I'll wish you good luck." He tossed a bag of coins onto the table. "That should buy you supplies for the journey. It isn't much, but it's all we have to spare. We'll barley be able to afford provisions as it is."

"Sir?" Sam saluted. She looked sly. "I think I can help out with gathering supplies. Permission to form a foraging party?"

Captain Klein stared at her sternly for a moment before nodding. "Oh, all right. Permission granted. But don't make too much trouble. And don't take more than three men. Dismissed."

Klein stomped out of the galley. Chandrasitar rolled her eyes and followed him, murmuring something about packing. Razze went to fetch a mug of ale."

"Foraging party? As in, living off the land? Hunting?" Neana asked.

"Something like that," Sam smirked. "Let's go get packed. Oh! And, if you could do me a favor, put on your full dress uniform. The one with the brass buttons."

"Why?"

"Trust me. Have I ever led you wrong?"


	4. 3:Wherein tea is drunk and gender bended

Author's Note: Here's chapter 3. Chapter 4 is done and awaiting editing.

Chapter three is a bit too talky, but chapter four has wacky hijinks -- also torture, piratical accoutrements, and goblins -- and chapter five should be full of action.

* * *

"And I'll need…" Neana studied her list, "one hundred feet of rope, and a roll of heavy twine."

"Trevor, fetch the lady two spools of rope." The shopkeeper babbled. She was a babbler. It had gotten on Neana's nerves within the first five minutes, and that had been an hour ago. "Goodness! What a lot of rope! What do you plan to do with it all?"

"Tying stuff, I guess. Whatever. I didn't write this list."

"You have help coming, don't you, dear? Servants? I suspect that you'd barely be able to lift half of the order by yourself. Ropes, grappling hooks, tindertwigs, canvas, chalk, netting, tents, bags, sacks, and a gallon of lamp oil… I'm having to send Trevor running all over town to borrow stock."

"I'll be able to manage it," Neana replied.

"Oh, no, dear! We'll get Trevor to do it. I would never forgive myself if I let a tiny young lady like yourself struggle out the door with that huge load on your shoulders."

"I'm older than you are, you fat, ugly bag."

"What was that dear? Young ladies really shouldn't mumble so."

"I said that it'll be fine," Neana sighed. "When it's all together, just get it out the door. Some people will be along to help me carry it away."

The shopkeeper hesitated. "As to the… um… matter of payment?"

"Some people will be along shortly with _very fat __coinpurses_ to help me carry it away," she growled.

"Oh, very good, madam."

Neana breezed through the door, such as it was. Q'barrans had very odd notions of what constituted indoors and outdoors. The shop, which she had been assured was the largest dry goods store in Newthrone, was a rickety wooden skeleton of a building, with walls of billowy white canvas. Any building sturdier than that would be suffocating and unlivable in the jungle's stifling humidity. The doorflap fluttered in the breeze, lazily shooing away a cloud of mosquitoes. One of the biting insects landed on her cheek. She slapped it, and immediately regretted it: it popped, and her hand came back covered in sticky bug guts.

"Fucking Q'barra."

Q'barra was actually north of Cyre geographically, but you'd never know it from the climate. Hot, sullen winds from the Sea of Rage met the cooling waters of the Lhazaar Sea to whip up dour, brooding storm clouds and hurl them at Q'barra. The raging storms tended to hit Q'barra twice; passing over the country once, heading west to spend themselves against the Endworld Mountains, and then again, as their spent backwash slumped westward. When it wasn't wracked by storms, Q'barra spent its free time being a stagnant pool of swampwater and hateful lizard-folk. If the jungles hadn't been full of valuable dragonshards, no one but backwards political refugees would even bother with it.

A wandering vender offered her a taste of his wares: some kind of unidentified meat on a stick, stored hygienically in a greasy pan he wore hanging from straps around his shoulders. It looked like rat, in her veteran opinion.

She stared him down. "Fucking Q'barra."

Newthrone was like no city she had ever seen. Approximately half of the buildings were done up in old Imperial Galifaran style, all white marble columns and fat, ornamental balustrades and heavy peaked domes. That type of solid stone construction would have been considered antiquated even when Neana was a girl. Some of the buildings could have served as museum pieces– according to the incised lettering on its frontspiece, the building across from her _was_ a museum – except that they looked too new. Most of them were still relatively shiny and clean, without any of the cracks or verdigris that you associated with old civil edifices. Some of them possessed creeper vines climbing up their white stone walls, because you could never get away from the damn jungle in Q'barra, but that was it for the ravages of time. The nation of Q'barra was less than a century old, and its original founders had tried to gloss over their country's raw frontier nature with a thick veneer of borrowed history. You got a sense that their buildings were trying too hard.

The other half of the city, sprinkled liberally in-between the fake historic landmarks, were of the same style as the shop she'd just left; somewhere between tent and log cabin. They were cheap, breezy, made with local supplies, and probably easy to rebuild after the inevitable coastal monsoon. They were jungle buildings. She noticed that the wood and canvas edifices seemed to have a lot more activity going on around them than the heavy stone ones. No surprise that the older buildings were unpopular in the spring: the windowless stone walls would act like an oven in the heavy jungle heat, and drive their owners out of doors until the sun set.

Neana was no great judge of architecture, but even she could read a story from the buildings of Newthrone. The colonists, fleeing the war, had come to the jungle and tried to rebuild their old way of life, far away from the killing and bloodshed. Flush with pioneering spirit they had copied the manners of a more peaceful time, clearing away trees and carting stone blocks from the nearby mountains to create a monument to their fractured empire. They named their city Newthrone, and their settlement New Galifor, recalling a more unified period of the continent's past. And then, very quickly, they discovered what the word "jungle" really meant. They discovered that airy fountains were breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and that stone balustrades were no good at keeping flies out. They found that the heat and the damp smothered the old and the weak during a bad summer, and that stinging insects could be more than a nuisance; they could be plague carriers. Hundreds of people must have died.

And so, over the decades, New Galifor had quietly and without fanfare divided itself into two camps. Some of the residents of Newthrone had learned their lesson: they lived with the jungle, not against it. They made allowances in their architecture for the heat and weather and insects. They dressed in airy, loose fabrics and wore strange, widebrimmed hats with a kind of fluttery silk veil attached to keep buzzing insects out of their faces. Other residents of Newthrone had stubbornly resisted making accommodations to their new country. They pretended that they were still back in the Five Nations, and dressed in the "civilized" finery popular in the cooler and more temperate nations to the west. Watching men and women with more money than sense suffering stoically in the summer heat, Neana felt a rare pang of shared sympathy; she was also roasting alive in her stupid dress uniform that Sam had insisted she wear.

"Madam?"

Neana turned. The shopkeeper had followed her outside. She was a member of the pragmatic camp: she was wearing an odd blue garment, like someone had taken one long bedsheet and had wrapped it around her several times to make a loose dress. She held her odd little hat hesitantly in both hands.

"Yes?" In her current mood, Neana had less than no desire to have a conversation.

"You're from Cyre, aren't you? From the boat?"

Neana looked down at her uniform, with its Cyran green trim and bell-and-hammer insignia and the Cyran Navy Star, awarded for valor in battle. "Yes?"

"Were you there? Did you see it happen?"

"Yes." _Shut up shut up shut up shut up_.

"Oh." The shopkeeper twisted her hat. "We've been getting a lot of stories in the papers. They say all kinds of things. Crazy things."

"Yes?" Neana put on her best 'continue this line of questioning and I will bite out your tongue' face, to no effect. She wished she had her sword and armor. No one tried to carry on painfully awkward conversations with someone wearing forty pounds of steel. Honestly, what was the point of even trying to cultivate an air of eerie sociopathy if no one else was going to respect it?

"I just wanted to know… if I could ask… what was it really like? What _really_ happened?"

"There was a grey mist. Monsters came out of it," Neana said flatly. "They killed everyone."

"Oh."

"Everyone."

Neana would tell herself later that it was the shopkeeper's annoying curiosity that distracted her, that her own danger instincts were still as sharp as ever. As it was, she had only an instant's warning. _Danger!_ She jerked her head up in time to see the crowd across the street erupt in startled irritation as a huge half-orc shoved people aside. Shoppers stumbled over baskets of fresh produce in their hurry to clear a path for the charging figure. The orc-man broke past the edge of the crowd and blinked stupidly in the bright afternoon sun; three hundred pounds of grey skin and flabby muscle wrapped in a crude vest and sailor's pants. Then he saw Neana and bared his cracked tusks in an ugly grin.

Neana reached for her sword, but it was back on the Mother Bear, along with her armor and her marine contingent, all of which could have come in handy right about now. Still, she was a wizard as well as a warrior; as long as she had her hands free and an alert mind, she was never defenseless. She raised both hands palm up and began to chant the words of power which would suck the living essence from the orc's body and leave him a withered husk. She was three syllables in when the half-orc reached her, wrapped his hairy arms around her, and lifted her up in the air. He squeezed, and all the air rushed out of her lungs.

"My father is alive!"

She gasped weakly.

"My birth-father! He's alive."

"Sam?"

"He's in Breland! He made it to Wroat and left a message for me with the Traveler cult there. They just delivered it today."

"Sam!"

"Isn't it wonderful? I'm so happy!"

"You're choking me, Sam."

"Oh. Sorry." The half-orc put her down gently. "I forget my own size, sometimes." The half-orc – Sam – turned to the shopkeeper, who was trying to decide whether to flee in terror from the hulking dock rat, or just be absolutely appalled that he was mangling one of her customers in front of her respectable establishment. "Hello, Ma'am. Is our order ready yet?"

"I… no… That is to say, no." She was gripping her hat so hard the brim began to rip. "I had to send the boy down to the warehouse to fetch some extra tindertwigs. Will you be… are you…?"

"Picking it up? Oh, yes'm. As soon as you gets it all together and the rest of my friends show up."

"Friends?" She was about to faint. "More… like you?"

"Oh, yes ma'am. They'll be along any minute now, don't you worry. Listen; in the mean time, is there anywhere nearby where the lieutenant and me could go get something to drink? I'm mighty parched."

"There's a tea house around the corner." She pursed her lips. "Or were you looking for a tavern? Or a, ah… pub?"

"Tea sounds just lovely, Ma'am." Sam tapped her gnarled orc fingers to her brow, tipping an imaginary hat.

The tea house turned out to be an open air tent affair, with waist-high made of paper stretched over a wooden frame. The tables were simple and low to the ground, with odd, blocky legs. To Neana's amazement, the tea server – a short, gnomish fellow with twinkling eyes and a kettle half as large as he was – climbed the table leg like a stair step and poured her tea. Neana warily took a sip.

"Hey, this isn't bad. What is this?"The gnome smiled and gave an odd half-bow. "Jasmine. A tisane, in the Rierdran style."

Sam sipped demurely at her cup. Thick orcish fingers looked ludicrous gripping the fragile porcelain. "It's all the rage in Sharn, they say. All the nobles are on a waiting list to take tea with the Rierdran ambassador. They say he tells the most enchanting stories."

"Just so," the gnome said. He climbed down from their table with surprising dignity.

Neana cocked an eyebrow as soon as he was out of earshot. "Since when are you knowledgeable about foreign ambassadors?"

"I get around," Sam said. "When you're a professional eavesdropper, you hear a lot of silly gossip."

"Professional eavesdropper? Is that what you were doing while I was wandering around town for hours trying to buy supplies? That silly list you gave me was an arm long."

"That I was, among other things," Sam smiled. She liked to have her secrets teased out of her, a mannerism that had stopped being endearing long ago. "Is anyone looking at me right now?"

"No."

"You might want to shut your eyes, then," she said. Neana closed her eyes and counted to five; she knew what came next. When she opened them, Sam was no longer disguised as a half-orc dockhand. Instead she wore the face she usually put on when away from the ship, that of a tall, skinny half-elf woman with copper hair and green eyes. Other than the obvious racial characteristics, the face was recognizably similar to the androgynous changeling one that, she had assured Neana, was her true form. It was, Neana gathered, something like a game that Sam played; she liked to imagine what she might have looked like if she had been born as another race. "Anybody notice that?"

"No one is staring."

"Good. When you're a changeling, it doesn't pay to advertise."

"Hey, how did your clothes change? I thought you couldn't do clothes."

"You like it?" Sam leaned back in her chair. "_Siffith_." In an instant, the simple coat and breeches she was wearing changed to a full-length brocaded silk gown. "_Siffith_." Now she was garbed head to toe in black and dark green clothes which seemed to soak up the light. She even had a short black veil drawn across her face, so only her eyes were exposed. "_Siffith_." And back to the simple clothes again.

"Okay, now people are staring. What was that?"

"Last season's salary," Sam said ruefully. "You know that trick you do with your armor? Where you can put it on just by snapping your fingers?"

"That's a spell, Sam. Channeled through the armor. It's part of my battle-mage training."

"Whatever. Well, I got armor envy, so I made a personal requisition for a set of shiftweave outfits from Cannith quartermasters. Now I can change disguises in the blink of an eye. You like?"

Neana shrugged. "It suits you."

"Thanks." Sam sipped calmly at her tea.

"So… your father?"

"He's alive!" She squealed. Then, perhaps remembering that Neana's wasn't, she toned it down. "My birth-father is alive. He was out of the country at the time, selling his wares in Breland, along with the rest of his company. He's perfectly fine." She smiled in relief. "I'm just so – listen, I know what happened to your parents, so if this is bothering you I'll shut up, but I'm positively vibrating."

"No, I'm fine." The tea was really very good. "It's been forty years, Sam. The pain fades." Very good. Exquisite, really. "So… is your mother okay?"

"My mother?"

"Your mom?" Neana hesitated. "I know you don't really talk about her… I always assumed that you just weren't close."

"Oh. I thought I had told you." Sam set her cup down. "My father is my mother."

"What?"

"He's my _birth_-father, see? He gave birth to me." As if it were something perfectly natural: "Because he was pregnant."

"What?!"

"Oh, this is always weird to discuss with non-shapeshifters. Look: I'm a changeling, right? We can put on any face we want, just by thinking about it. We can physically alter our bodies to take on the characteristics of just about anything with two arms, two legs, and a head."

"He did what?" Neana's teacup was rattling a drum solo against the saucer.

"Just go along with me. Now… my people, you understand; we are not family friendly folk. If you think other races distrust changelings, you should see us around one another. We're born liars, and innately deceitful, and we know it. We also find it difficult to stay around the same people for any length of time; when your greatest natural talent is identity theft, then your greatest weakness if people growing too familiar with you. We don't form strong ties, we don't put down roots, and we don't have extended families. I'm considered a _freak_ by my people's standards, because I joined the army and I go by my true name and face."

"Sam…"

"Hey, I enjoy being a freak. But you have to understand, there aren't many changelings like me. We don't form long-lasting ties, as a rule. But there are two exceptions. One is the Traveler Cult. We aren't overtly religious, but legend says that the Traveler created changelings to be his people, and we respect that. I'm not even sure if the gods really exist –"

"They exist," Neana said firmly.

"Yeah," Sam avoided looking her in the eyes. "We've had that talk. You know I respect your faith, even if I don't share it. Anyway, even if I don't exactly believe, I'd rather err on the side of not pissing off a god, you know? So even I visit a Traveler shrine from time to time. Most changelings feel similar; we honor our god, but after our own fashion. Where the congregations of the Sovereign Host and the Silver Flame tithe gold to their gods, and where you…" Sam tapered off.

"Dedicate the deaths of my enemies to the Lady of Rage?"

"Yeah. That. Well, changelings tithe _secrets_ to the priests of the Traveler Cult. We know the value of good information, and we pass it on. That's why the Church of the Traveler is one of the most powerful intelligence networks ever created; even the dang gnomes are jealous of us. And when a changeling is down on their luck, or in danger, or desperate, they always know that they can go to a Traveler shrine, where they'll… well, probably they'll get help, even if it's just the name of a really good undertaker. Anyway, that's how I found out about my Dad. I went down to the docks and asked around, under the table, until I found where they hid the Traveler's shrine. The minister there was very helpful."

"Your father gave birth!"

"See, I'm working my way up to that. Be patient. Anyway, aside from the church, and a couple of weird changeling communes I've heard rumor of down in Talenta, the only other time changelings congregate in groups is to form companies. Corporations. It's a little bit like a family, but mostly it's a business proposition. A small group of shapeshifters can accomplish amazing things if they work together. There are changeling acting troupes in Sharn and Fairhaven, there are, heh, all-changeling brothels scattered here and there which make a fortune – you know, I actually considered going into that line of work once – and there are probably quite a few international businesses that you would be surprised to learn are secretly run by changelings. Well, that's what my father did, and probably still does, if enough of his company survived the disaster. I hope they did."

"You _father_ gave—"

"I'm getting there! Anyway, it was a family-owned export company based out of Metrol: the ir'Fioran Trading Concern. The Fiorans were a huge, mixed human clan from east Cyre, where old, landowning money married into new, manufacturing money and spat out the kind of shady smuggling-hiding-behind-legitimate-shipping business that Metrol was founded on. Only it was all a lie; there never were any ir'Fiorans, only a fake family tree and a cute backstory cobbled together to fool clients and investors. An aristocratic name greases a lot of wheels, and besides: the lineages for Cyran nobility are such a morass that no one ever noticed that a whole semi-legitimate family line just popped up out of nowhere. The dozen or so ir'Fiorans were actually only five changelings – six, after I was born – playing the parts of family members. They would take turns, trading parts and inventing new relatives whenever it was convenient to maintain the façade. I used to join in too, when I was a kid; sometimes I was cousin Janice, or young master Rand or little baby Riki. One time I even got to pretend to be a Halfling butler, because I was the only one that could fit in the uniform. It was a heap of fun. Other girls played dress-up, I played masquerade."

"Anyway, I never did get the entire story out of him, but the long and the short of it is, there was a plot to secure some incriminating correspondence for blackmailing purposes, from a senior Thranish diplomat who was infatuated with Cousin Ailia, and when they drew straws to see who had to seduce him, my Dad drew the short one. We're pretty sure that was how I was conceived. My father was really upset about it; he had to stay practically the same shape for nine months. Pregnant changelings can barely shift at all."

"That's horrible," Neana said.

"Oh, I don't think so. He was a pretty loving father, all things considered, in his own odd way. He took good care of me growing up. And changeling kids aren't easy to raise, believe me. I was a handful."

"No, I meant… Ugh." Neana set down her cup. Tea splashed over the brim to fill the saucer. "That's just… strange. And kind of sickening."

"Why?" Sam was honestly perplexed.

"A man changing into a woman – let alone a man giving birth – is just unnatural."

"I go disguised as a man all the time," Sam said. As if to prove her point she wiped a hand along her face. As her fingers passed they left her jaw squarer, her lips thinner. Her shoulders widened and her clothes shifted and rustled as subtle curves melted away to be replaced by lean muscle. When it was done Neana sat facing a male half-elf that, nevertheless still resembled Sam, or at least how Sam usually preferred to appear.

Neana looked away. "That's different. It's a disguise. And when you're male – when you're man-shaped," she corrected, "it's just a shape. You don't… well, sometimes you act mannish, but you don't ever sleep with anyone."

"Well, no. Not anymore. That would be cheating. But I could, if I wanted to." Sam pointed at his lap. "The equipment works, is what I'm saying. If you ever want to give it a go." He waggled her eyebrows.

"I think I'm going to vomit."

Sam shrugged, sloughing off her masculinity. She was back to herself in seconds. "I'm just saying, these things aren't always so set in stone. Not for me, they aren't. Sometimes gender is optional."

Neana glared at her accusingly. "When we first… when we _first_, you told me that you were a woman."

"I am. I really am. You've seen what I really look like." Sensing skepticism, she went on the defensive. "You have, I promise. Even changelings have a true form. The face I wear around the ship is my real, natural one. I always make a point of that; I don't dance the face-dance while I'm on duty, and I don't lie about who I really am to the people I trust."

"All right, Sam. I believe you." Neana pushed her teacup away. All thoughts of finishing the drink had left her mind as soon as the mental image of a pregnant male changeling had entered it. "I guess I'm just more comfortable thinking of what you do as just an illusion. It's… unsettling… to think of the physical side."

Sam was toying with her spoon, flipping it end over end through her fingertips, a sure sign that she was nervous. "The thing about being a changeling is… everything is a choice. Everything. The most basic facts that you take for granted – sex, appearance, size, name – we have to choose. We need the choices to make us who we are, because we don't have anything else. I know it looks like we're all fakes and liars to the rest of you, but it's just because for us, the truth is something you create. The fact that it's flexible only makes it truer. In a way, I'm more of a woman than most human women because I had a choice in the matter. If I lied, who would ever know?"

Neana sighed. "It's a lot to take in, Sam. That's all I'm saying."

An awkward silence settled over the table. Sam continued to fiddle with her spoon, while Neana, who was a bad conversationalist at the best of times, summoned a tiny ball of glowing light and tried to balance it on the back of her hand: a sure sign that the half-elf was bored.

Suddenly, a voice rang out from across the street. "What's this? What's going on here?"

Both women looked up, startled. The ball of light evaporated. Neana's hand instinctively went to her missing sword, Sam's hand slipped inside her sleeve. Steel glinted between her fingers.

To be continued soon…

PS: Yes, changelings really can do that, according to the books.


	5. 4: Wherein a damn fine hat is bought

Sorry for the delay, here's the next chapter.

* * *

"What's this?" A voice rang out from across the street. "Frowning faces? Now what could you be discussing that would cause two such beautiful ladies to look so dispirited?" Razze trotted across the street, leaning over the three foot wood and paper "wall" that separated the inside of the tea house from the market district of Q'barra. "Tell me, I beg you." 

"Nothing, Neana grunted. She lowered her hand and felt the pressure that had been building in her temples ease as the words of magic receded back into her mind. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sam stow two daggers back up her sleeves.

"We were talking about penises," Sam said. "Ow! Hey, why did you kick me?"

"No reason." Neana did it again.

"Of course you were," Razze said smoothly. "Fascinating as I'm sure that must have been, may I interject a new topic of conversation? Behold: my new hat!" He posed.

"Hey, nice!" Sam clapped daintily, like a child watching a street show. "It really sets off the points in your ears."

"You paid for that?" Neana asked. "Are you sure you didn't lose a bet, instead?"

Razze pulled his hat down rakishly over one eye. It was wide brimmed, with an odd curling edge on one side and long, feathery plume. "Scoff all you want, you unsophisticated street rabble, but you should be aware that this is the latest fashion in Sharn. All the finest nobles of our generation are wearing one. I know that you," he pointed at Sam, "are only half a woman, and that you," he pointed at Neana, "are… differently inclined, but rest assured that this hat, combined with my ample natural charms, will render me irresistible to women. Well, more so than I already was."

Same swooned theatrically. "La, sir. I fear I am about to be overcome by your raw masculinity."

"You have shown me the error of my previous ways," Neana said flatly. "Take me here and now, you handsome half-elven warrior."

Razze really was handsome, probably: Neana wasn't the best judge of men. But, if you were into that sort of thing, he came across as exactly type of man most women seemed to go crazy for. He was handsome, clever, quick with his hands, and flushed with that special kind of arrogance that seems charming and audacious after the second glass of wine. Now, normally, on a rough and tumble naval ship, that kind of thing would fly about as far as a lead pelican, but Razze had a few saving graces. He was a masterful swordsman, and also casually violent; he had an uppercut widely feared across the southern fleet. He was also, in the military jargon, a_ solid_: he was dependable in battle and never lost his nerve or showed the slightest hint of fear or hesitation or doubt. He might look, due to his half-elven heritage, like a raw recruit barely old enough to shave, but he had plenty of experience, if not wisdom. And finally, Neana quietly suspected that behind the flash and the bravado, Razze was actually a good man, for what that was worth.

On the whole, Neana had decided to like him, but just barely.

He grinned and tossed a small bag onto the table. "There's your stupid herbs, Sam. It took me all morning to track them down."

"Thank you kindly." Sam dumped the bags contents onto the table; a few bundles of dried twigs and leaves and a handful of bent copper coins. "Was there any silver left over?"

"To reiterate: new hat!" Razze tapped the brim.

"Ah," Sam said. "That's… unfortunate."

"Why's that?" Neana asked. Then, enlightenment dawned. "Sam, did you give him all of the money the Captain gave us?"

"Well…"

"Sam! You spent our entire travel fund on a bag of weeds?"

"Not all of it!" Sam grabbed the tiny pouch and hugged it to her chest. "And these aren't weeds, they're valuable herbal agents. They're antitoxins. With these you can make poultices to prevent the spread of poisons. We need them if we're going to live in the jungle for a month. You want to get bitten by a snake and die?"

"If it means I can afford to sleep in the tents I just spent an hour shopping for, instead of on the wet, muddy ground, I think I'll risk it," Neana returned. "What were you thinking, Sam? You sent me into the market with a shopping list the length of my arm, and you promised me you would show up with the money to pay for everything."

"Ah, but I have… metaphorically. That's where the rest of the money comes in: I needed them for bribes."

"Sam…"

"It's all part of my plan. Trust me."

"Wait! Let me get in position." Razze hopped over the low wall and sat down at their table, ignoring the protests of the tea house owner. "This should be good. All right, go: What plan?"

"Well, it isn't exactly my plan," Sam admitted. "It's Captain Klein's. But I showed the initiative in executing it. That's why while both of you were out shopping for supplies, and while Chandra was fetching our native guide, I was forming up a foraging party."

"Oh gods," Razze said. "Not again. You almost burned down half of Port Verge the last time."

"A foraging party?" Neana was puzzled, and angry. Most of her emotional states these days ended with, 'and angry'. "You mean: soldiers raiding local farms for supplies, hunting animals, scavenging for nuts and berries? That kind of foraging party?"

"That's the basic idea, yeah. If you had ever been regular infantry, you would have been in one. When I was with the border sentinels near Thrane, we had to do it all the time. When the holy Faithriders weren't tearing us a new asshole, the other wardens and I would all go out and hunt deer and dry the venison out to use as stores for the infantrymen."

"We're in the middle of a bloody city, Sam, surrounded by a hundred miles of black and impenetrable jungle. Where exactly were you expecting to find a deer?"

"Honestly?" Sam asked. "Right over there." She pointed, and Neana noticed two things; first, she saw the hunched over figure of a shifter she recognized as one of the sailors from the Mother Bear, standing uneasily amidst the crowd.

And then she noticed the crowd. Dozens of people had turned up in the last few minutes. Most of them were shooting furtive glances at the tea house. The rest were staring openly, and taking out the sides of their mouths about the weird Cyran soldiers and their inappropriate behavior. Neana realized, with a sinking feeling.

"Huh. That's a lot of people."

"Right!" Sam said triumphantly. "That's step one of the plan: draw a crowd. Why else do you think I asked you to walk around all day in full dress uniform?"

"Cruel, capricious whim?"

"Not today. It was because in this town, at this time, there's no easier way to draw a bull's-eye on your butt than to be known as a survivor of the Day of Mourning."

"Day of Mourning?"

"That's what they're calling the… you know, the… disaster," Sam said. "More than two months later and it's still the biggest news in town. Especially with two ships of war sitting in the harbor, loaded to capacity with the Heroes of the War."

"They're calling us heroes?" Razze asked. "That's great. I guess the civilian population has finally learned to recognize greatness." He flashed a pearly grin.

"Yeah, at least around these parts. This is very Cyran-friendly territory; a lot of these people's parents came here on a boat from Seaside or Metrol. The old loyalties still bind. Anyway, gossip mongers have been working double time ever since we arrived, and they went absolutely orc-shit after they saw the Captains show up at the palace requesting an audience. Everybody I've talked to has their own pet theory about what happened to Cyre, and they're hoping one of us will let slip some little morsel to verify their fears. On the other face, everyone also seems to believe that we're all raging, bloodthirsty veteran killers. "

"How's that?" Razze asked.

"Not sure. I guess they think that anybody who can walk away from the greatest catastrophe in history must be cursed by the good gods, or blessed by the dark gods ,or just plain meaner than the pits of Kyber. Nobody wants to get too near one of us in case we decide to snap. So, mostly, they just stand around and gawk."

"That would explain some of the strange conversations I've been having today," Neana rasped. "I figured it was just my usual sterling personality driving people away." She giggled, hoping to make Razze uncomfortable. It worked.

"Nope. This time, it was your reputation that preceded you. Although the crazy eyes and the creepy voice probably helped."

"Just one question, Sam." Neana searched the crowd again, but the familiar-looking shifter seemed to have disappeared for the moment. "How is my uniform, or our reputation, or fucking _any of this_ supposed to be paying for our supplies?"

"Just trust me, will you?" Sam pleaded. "I have a plan. Step one of the plan was to draw a crowd, which you and I," she indicated the milling throng across the street with the sweep of an arm. Several people flinched back. "Have done admirably. Step two should be wrapping up as we speak. And from the look of things, if we don't hurry, we'll miss step three."

She got up and walked out of the tea house, paying the gnomish proprietor, Neana noticed sourly, with the last of their copper pieces. Neana and Razze looked at one another, shrugged, and followed her.

"Now, whenever you get large crowds of people together, what else naturally follows?" Sam asked. It turned out to be a rhetorical question. "Pickpockets! Pickpockets are drawn to crowds of slackjawed onlookers like flies are drawn to—"

"Horseshit."

"I was going to say honey…"

"It was intended as more of a general statement," Neana said nastily.

"Look," Sam sighed, "let me have my moment, all right? I don't question you when you're murdering elves, or Razze when he's swashing buckles, or the Captain when he's bossing people around, or Chandra when she's ripping minds, do I? I respect your areas of expertise, don't I? Well, we're in a city, we're dead broke, and we're surrounded by indifferent crowds. That's native territory for a changeling. You need some loose coinage and you don't particularly care where it comes from, right? Well, I've been conning rubes since I could talk. I'll get us the money, I promise. And we need it, desperately. Not just to buy a few camping supplies, but to repair the ship and pay our wages and keep us in food and water. it's not as if there's any royal treasury to foot the bill anymore. I promised Klein I'd get the money, but only if you stop fighting me on this, okay? Just... trust me. Please?"

Neana studied her. Sam was really pleading, not just wrapping herself in drama for drama's sake. For some reason, this was important to her; not just the plan or the money, but the presentation of the thing. Whenever Sam got a big idea into her head, Neana knew from experience, she wanted everything to go perfectly. Like the time in Vurgenslye when they had snuck into Karnathi territory disguised as a traveling show to scout out troop movements, and Sam had insisted on putting on a real theatrical production. She had ended up playing half the parts herself. Whenever Sam got caught up in one of her projects, she was like a manic whirlwind: a whirl of cheery energy and creativity wrapped around a tight core of anxiety and fear of failure.

Neana, perhaps because she was so much the opposite, respected that. She sighed, and relented. "Go ahead."

"Where was I? Oh, right. Pickpockets!" Several people in the crowd patted their sides nervously. Sam used the opportunity to dive into the milling throng, pushing aside innocent marketplace shoppers with both elbows and no regard for their angry cries. Neana and Stache ducked into her wake. Like most Cyrans, they were at home in a crowded city street. "May I assume that the two of you know little of the larcenous arts?" She didn't wait for them to answer. "Allow me to educate! Picking pockets, as a rule, requires two people; a stall, and a pick. A stall's job is to distract the mark long enough for the pick to rifle their pockets. The usual method is to 'accidentally' bump into the mark, and then apologize profusely, but some stalls prefer to drop an armload of goods and then ask for help picking them up, or to proposition a mark sexually – that's my favorite. But, really, whatever keeps people looking in your direction works."

Sam finally broke through the crowd only to find herself back at the shop she and Neana had met earlier. She ducked through the billowing door flap and accosted the plump shopkeeper. "Excuse me, ma'am, just going to fetch your money. Oh, that's right, you don't remember me from before because I was a half-orc. Nevermind, then. Hey, you have a rear exit, right? Oh, I see it. Thank you so much for your help."

The shopkeeper gaped. Neana shrugged at her and followed her girlfriend.

"Not many people realize it," Sam continued, "but the pick is actually the easier of the two jobs. Lifting a purse or wallet from a properly distracted mark is child's play; in fact, it's a job usually given to child thieves because of their small hands. Many a big city crime lord got their start in the life as a backalley filch-rat."

"I take it you used to be a picker?" Razze asked.

"And a dang good one." Sam ducked through another flimsy shop, this one selling elaborate cloth wraps like the one that the shopkeeper had been wearing. Neana eyed them longingly as she passed; the thin material looked a damn sight more comfortable than what she was currently wearing, and that particular shade of vibrant blue would bring out her eyes. "But only when I was desperate for some pocket change. Picking is too heavily regulated for my tastes, especially in Cyre."

"Regulated?" Razze asked mildly. "It's a crime. How do you regulate crime?"

"My point exactly!" This shop didn't have a back door, so, despite the objections of the shop's owner, Sam ducked underneath a canvas wall. Neana and Razze rolled their eyes and followed her. They found themselves pressed together inside a narrow alleyway, between the heavy canvas sides of new shop buildings and the blank white marble expanse of an Old Galifaran courthouse. Sam motioned them to keep their voices low. "In major cities, pick pocketing is almost always the sole province of powerful criminal organizations. Thieves guilds. It's a very territorial enterprise; it's important to lay claim to the most populous areas of the city, to make sure there aren't too many pickers working a crowd, and to know the rotations of the city guard. Independent contractors are always getting muscled out by the ruling thieves' guilds. They don't like to see 'scabs', or unaffiliated street-workers. If you think the local constables are tough on unlicensed thieving, you should see the thieves; crime bosses are ten times as rigid and draconian as any city magistrate. That's why all the smart criminals – like my Dad – get into legitimate business as fast as they can. The money is better, and the prison sentences are less severe."

"Why are we pressed against a wall in this alley?" Razze asked.

"And why are we whispering? Not that I have much choice," Neana grumbled.

Sam ignored them. "The biggest difference between regular picking and guild-approved picking is the presence of a third party to the con: the bag man. Once the pick lifts the purse from the mark, instead of slipping it into their own pocket, they drop it into the hands of a nearby associate, whose job it is to hold the stolen goods. Supposedly this is for the safety of the pick, so that, if caught, they don't have any incriminating evidence on them, but really the bag man's job is to make sure that her boss gets a cut of the take. The bag man usually sits in a centralized location and coordinates the efforts of several picks and stalls while keeping an eye out for patrolling guards. Once she has collected enough purses, she takes them back to a drop off point so that their contents can be fenced."

"Let's cut to the chase," Neana interrupted. "I know how your mind works: you're thinking about robbing a bag man, aren't you?"

"Think bigger," Sam grinned. "And remember: this isn't my plan, it's the Captain's."

A shifter appeared at the mouth of the alley. He didn't look at all surprised to see the three of them. He sauntered down the length of the alley in the natural manner of his people – which is to say, he skulked low to the ground, walking on all fours some of the time – and stopped when he was face to face with Sam. He scratched one thick, furry eyebrow in something like a salute. "We got him, boss," he growled. "Trussed up like a solstice ham."

"Good work, Nessin." Sam patted his back. "Let's go meet our new friend."

Seaman Nessin – Neana finally recognized the squat beast-man – motioned for them to follow. He led them through a tangled web of alleyways; the austere stone buildings of Newthrone might once have been separated by spacious lawns and fountains, but ambitious merchants and homeowners had long since filled in all the gaps with cloth and wood buildings in the new style, turning the area in between major streets into a convoluted maze. Neana was fascinated to see that the walls of the average Q'barran building didn't provide any privacy whatsoever; as they walked past, she caught snippets of conversation from a dozen different households, and in the few houses where lamps had been lit despite the bright afternoon sun, she saw the inhabitant's shadows cast against the wall.

They found two other members of the Mother Bear's crew skulking in a shadowy alley, where three huge white stone buildings didn't quite meet. Neana couldn't quite recall the names of either the sour faced human man or the stocky dwarven woman, but they looked like the type of sailor that has a miraculous ability to be elsewhere whenever the kitchens needed cleaning or the bilges needed pumping out. The type of soldier who is never seen fighting in a battle, but who can always be counted on to salvage the boots, rings, and gold teeth from any fallen enemies that might be lying around. Two lowdown sneaks, in other words.

_Sam's type of people_, Neana thought, and then immediately felt guilty.

Things to do today: stop being so fucking cynical.

"We found him running a meat pie stall near the fruit market," Nessin said. "Little sot tried to dust on us."

"He was cake," the human boasted. "A baker's dream. We lifted him up and out without a solitary."

"You say that because you didn't have to catch the little bugger," said the dwarf woman. "I've got fucking fang marks on the palm of my hand from keeping this little shit mum."

"Good work, everyone." Sam beamed. "We're halfway home already."

It dawned on Neana that she was missing something. Namely, the subject of this conversation. It took her a moment to find him; she finally noticed that the she-dwarf wasn't sitting on a pile of rags at all, but was instead squatting on a bound and gagged figure. A very short, very angry, very _smelly_ bound and gagged figure.

"A gobbo?" Neana smiled cruelly. "The bagman is a goblin?"

"Yeppity." The dwarf bounced on the short, orange, trussed up humanoid, eliciting a weary groan. "Gobbos make great bagmen. They're the scum of the earth, lower 'n dirt, so no one ever notices them. Makes 'em good for stashin' stuff."

"That takes care of step three," Sam said. "Step one: create a crowd to draw out pickpockets. Step two: follow the pickpockets to locate their bagman. Step three: kidnap the bagman. Now we do step four: interrogate the bagman to learn the location of his central hoard."

"Interrogate?" Razze asked. "How are we going to do that?"

"What am I, the Silver Inquisition? I dunno. I've never done it before." Sam shrugged. She studied the goblin. "Well, as I see it, it's like Captain Klein always says: you use the tools that you're given. Neana: hurt him until he talks."

"Really?" Neana asked.

"_Really?_" Razze echoed.

"Sure, go to town."

Neana smiled. "Happy birthday to me." She leaned over the sweating goblin, and in her best raspy voice said, "Did you hear that, Mr. Gobbo? You get to be my new toy. I never really had many toys as a child. Probably because my parents were brutally murdered in front of me. I had lots and lots of emotional problems, though." She said brightly. "Would you like me to share some?"

"Yeah…" Nessin slunk even further into the shadows. "About that. This kind of thing wasn't exactly on my duty roster when I woke up this morning, boss. If you don't need us, I think we'll tail it."

The tall, spindly human sailor grinned in a manner that wasn't entirely healthful. "I don't know, I could stand to watch the lady work. Been a while since I saw a proper goblin-baiting."

"Nah, we're good," Sam waved them off. "I think the Lieutenants and I can handle everything from here. You did excellent work, people. Go steal a little shore leave, before the captain puts you to laboring on a cargo hoist. Treat yourselves to a little fun with the money I know you stole off Mr. Gobbo. Call it a bonus."

Neana ignored the sailors' departure. "I hate goblins. I hate them almost as much as I hate elves. Dirty, tiny, wretched little things, all of you. I wish I had my toys, so that we could play properly; something nice and sharp would be lovely. Oh well. I can improvise. Did you know that I'm a magus, little goblin?" She held up her hand in front of the goblin, who tried to scream around the cloth crammed in its mouth as she wreathed her fingers in crackling arcs of pale blue lightning. It filled the alley with actinic light and smelled like sharpened air. "Arcane shock. I've been told that it's excruciating."

Razze sidled up to Sam and whispered in her ear. "We're not really going to let her torture him, are we?"

"O' course not. But I figure that after five minutes in the presence of Miss Tacey's crazy-little-devil-girl act, our bagman will be more than ready to sing us a jaunty tune."

"Good. I promised the Captain I wouldn't let you commit any war crimes while we were gone."

"Killjoy."

"Or I could use another spell, Mr. Goblin," Neana continued. "I have so many nasty ones. Did you know that you can use magic to steal someone's life away? Powerful necromancy. I can suck away a year of your life, just like that: hold it in my hand and watch it writhe. They say it's a terrible feeling; like someone chopped off a limb you didn't even know you had. And, of course, it's fun for me, because I get to absorb the years I remove. Save them up for a rainy day. Doesn't that sound delightful? How long do goblins live, anyway?"

"Can she really do that?"

"I have no idea," Sam admitted. "I don't think so. She's never said."

"It must be… interesting, sharing a cabin with her," Razze said. "I can't imagine what she's like behind closed doors. Every time I try, all I can envision is her sleeping in a coffin and radiating intense cold."

"You'd be surprised," Sam murmured. "It's all a façade you know. She's really a fuzzy bunny, once you get to know her. At first it was all disapproving stare this and creepy giggle that, and then she just opened up one evening and spilled her heart all over the floor. We talked and laughed and braided each other's hair until the break of dawn."

"Really?"

"Fuck no. Beneath the creepy, there's an extra helping of creepy. Although… she does have her moments, I have to admit."

They watched her work.

"What about acid? I could always conjure up some acid. There's nothing like a little permanent facial scarring to have a good time. Oh, the things I've done with acid," Neana tittered. "Or I could send you somewhere. Does that sound fun? Just teleport you in a random direction, as far away as I can throw you. You might end up anywhere: the bottom of the ocean, the depths of Khyber, or even a mile above the ground."

The goblin began to whimper. The stench of gobbo grew worse, if that were possible, and Neana noticed a damp stain.

"That's probably good enough," Sam whispered. Out loud, she said, "If I can interrupt play time for a moment? We probably ought to let him speak while his lungs and vocal chords are still intact. May I request a postponement?"

"Damnit, Sam. Don't get me all lathered up if you aren't going to let me loose." Neana slammed her crackling fist into the wall, leaving scorch marks on the white marble. "Fine, we'll coddle the stinking gobbo. Just let me know when it's my turn again." She stalked over the lean against the wall next to Razze. "How was that?" she whispered. "Too much? Over the top?"

Sam winked. With assistance from Razze she managed to tip the goblin upright, into a sitting position. She grabbed his impromptu gag. The goblin's dull, amber eyes flicked nervously between his captors and the mouth of the alleyway. "Now, if I pull this out, you have to promise you won't scream. If you scream, we're going to let Lt. Blue Eyes over there suck out your few remaining years. You follow?"

Jerky nod.

"Okay then." She pulled the gag.

The goblin sucked in a deep breath – and held it.

"Good boy. What's your name, Mr. Goblin?"

"Ru—Ruudrik."

"All right, Ruudrik. Play us fair, and you live. Play a false note, and it's back to the sadist's toybox. Crsytal?"

"Yes. Crystal." Ruudrik looked around, really looked around, for the first time, and Neana realized that he wasn't stupid. Ugly, yes. Stench-ridden, yes. Mean and vicious, like all of his kind, yes; but not stupid. He spent a moment sizing them up, and seemed to come to an accurate assessment of his odds of surviving. "Are you buttons?"

"Pardon?" Razze asked.

"Buttons. Bulls. Hammer and nails." When they just looked puzzled, he rolled his eyes. "Guards. The Law."

"Oh, no. We're what you call… independent contractors."

He eyed Neana's uniform. "You look like Law." She stared, and her piercing blue gaze rebuked him. "Guess maybe not. What you want?"

"Money."

"You got my money. Beastman, shorty, and human made off with all I got." Ruudrik spat. With Neana more than an arm's length away, he seemed to be regaining some of his nerve.

"They might have taken today's spoils, yes, but that's a pittance compared to what we're looking for. We're interested in the big stash," Sam said. "And you know where that is, don't you?"

"Maybe do, maybe don't." Ruudrik tried out a sickly grin. "We bargain, yes? Something for you, something for me?"

Razze's sword left his scabbard too fast for Neana to follow; and that was saying something. The tip of his rapier hovered a hair's breadth away from the goblin's left eyeball. The half-elf smiled his winningest smile, as if attempted-ocular-piercing were his favorite past-time. "I believe there is a fundamental misunderstanding in play here. We don't bargain. Bargaining requires a degree of equality that does not exist in this alley. This is a much simpler arrangement: we speak, you do. Follow?"

Ruudrik didn't dare blink lest he risk slitting his own eyelid. "Following."

"Well then, Ruudrik: spill thine guts!"

Between the goblin's poor grammar and the trio's pointed questioning, it took better than half an hour to fish the story out of him. It amounted to little enough. The goblin was a low level stooge working for Newthrone's resident crime boss, a shadowy figure whose name and description Ruudrik was never able to adequately express. Ruudrik really only knew three things about him: he was big, which from a goblin could refer to anyone more than shoulder high to a beer barrel, he was inventively cruel, and his name was either 'The Brutus', 'The Heavy', or 'Brutus the Heavy'. Brutus apparently preferred goblins for his underlings; they were clever enough to keep their heads down, but too unimaginative to skim off the top.

"The Brutus is big man. Lives like king! Rules from throne, with iron fist, like goblin lords of old." Ruudrik nodded his approval. "Very fitting leader."

"Sounds like a great guy. About this throne… are we talking a real throne? With gilt, silver edgework, maybe even a big gem encrusted affair?" Sam's eyes gleamed.

"Is big chair," Ruudrik shrugged.

"How many people does he command? And how many are worth a damn in a fight?" Neana asked, cutting to the point. She was tired of goblin bullshit.

"Lots. Lots and many and lots." When Neana gave him the evil eye, Ruudrik clarified. "I not know. More than twenty, less than fifty. Is very flexible enterprise."

Razze shook his head. "He knows the word 'enterprise', but he can't use the indefinite article?" When both Sam and Neana stared at him, he responded, "Hey, I can do more than look pretty and poke holes in people. I have a brain, you know."

"It doesn't matter how many thieves are in the guild," Sam said. "What's important is how many enforcers he has. Your common burglar will turn her tail and run at the first sign of trouble. If he has any loyal thugs, though… they might need a little convincing. How's about that, Ruudrik? Does your man Brutus have any bodyguards? Anyone get a kick out of knocking around local businesses and demanding protection money? Big, chunky guys with walnut fists?"

"Yesss…? You talking about Tellith? Very scary tall one, is Tellith. He leads the Black Fists. Used to be street gang near docks, until the Heavy took docks away. Now he works for the Brutus. Hand-man. Does the dirty work. Keeps the rabble in line."

"And these Black Fists are the enforcers?"

Ruudrik shrugged. "I don't know about walnuts, but Black Fists extra chunky. Mostly Gubs and Snorts."

"That's orcs and hobgoblins," Sam translated. "Sounds like an easy rush. Street gangs are all talk, no action. Bunch of primitive good old boys, egging each other on, trying to work up the nerve to brawl. You show them a little steel, show them that you can really fight, and they'll evaporate. Neana, what's wrong?"

Neana closed her eyes and pursed her lips, like a child savoring a stolen sweet. She smiled at the goblin, which seemed to upset him greatly. "Tellith is an elvish name, isn't it?"

"Yah, I guess. He has pointy ears. That elf, right?" Ruudrik asked. "I don't know. All you tall ones look alike to me."

"Tellith…" Neana tasted the name. "Khorvairan elvish, not Valenar elvish. Still, close enough. This is finally starting to look like fun."

"Hey, you got pointy ears too. Weird," the goblin mused.

Sam sighed. "Neana, is this going to be a problem?"

"Not for me. Tallith might disagree…"

Sam wisely chose not to press the point. "Okay, Ruudrik: time for the million copper piece question. Where is the gold?"

"What gold?" The goblin did a poor job of radiating innocence.

"Lt. Nanteel?"

Razze obliged: the rapier returned with a vengeance, flicking out of its scabbard to gently – ever so gently – prod the tip of the goblin's flat snout.

"The gold, Ruudrik?"

"I don't know about any gold!" Ruudrik protested. "Your three skids skipped with all the gold I having. You want, go get back from them!"

Razze inserted the tip of his rapier into Ruudrik's nostril. "Say the word, and I push. Less than an ounce of pressure will see this through the back of your skull."

Ruudrik reconsidered. The goblin did some very personal mathematics, and he did them quickly. "Oh, that gold? I know where that gold is."

Neana rolled her eyes while Razze unblocked Ruudrik's nostril. The goblin breathed a sigh of relief. Razze stared mournfully at the tip of his blade. "Goblin snot."

"You looking for the stash. Why didn't you say so? I know exactly where stash is hidden. I can take you, get you inside. Easy as fried lizard."

"The stash?"

"The Brutus very smart," Ruudrik bragged. "He come to city, he take over docks, he make himself king of thieves. Respectable, but nothing special. We get new king of thieves every few years: rule for a few months, and then someone stick knife in their back." Ruudrik reflected. "Or neck. Or eye. You make enemies, becoming king of thieves. Eventually someone gets even. But not with the Heavy."

"Why not?"

"He is being hard person to stick a knife into. And he is cunning: he uses carrot and stick. Stick is Tellith. Carrot is the stash."

"What, like a big pile of gold?" Sam was excited. "How big are we talking? Breadbox? Small dog? Pony?"

"I see no piles of gold, not once. I see chest, though, covered in locks. He keeps it underneath his throne, and no one but he is allowed to touch it. Once a month, the Brutus takes out chest and splits the take with the whole guild. The stash is why no one challenges the Brutus for leadership."

"Why, is he the only one with a key?"

"Feh. Keys. It is thieves' guild! Anyone could take the stash, but doing so would bring down the wrath of the entire guild. The stash belongs to everyone; to steal from it is to steal from half the thieves in city. And it is never empty! I have seen with own eyes the guild be paid out of the chest, until each one has his allotment, and still the chest is not empty. The stash grows day by day, and with it, the power of the guild. Many people have been big boss in Newthrone, but none had ever paid as well as the Brutus. Money buys loyalty."

"Interesting," Sam said. "This might be a little harder than I thought. But the reward sounds tempting… Beneath his throne, you say? Could you be more specific?"

The goblin verbally sketched out a quick map of the guild headquarters, as best he recalled. Neana, quickly growing bored, tried to question Ruudrik about the building's defenses, but the goblin was useless. Like most of his kind, he viewed the world in a very particular, waist-high manner: he could name every crevice, hiding place, or bolt-hole in the building, but never even paid attention to the weapons, if any, the guards carried, or even if there were guards.

When they were finished, Ruudrik said, "I did good, yes? I cooperate very well. You steal stash, maybe you even give some to Ruudrik?"

"Stranger things have happened," Sam said, "but I doubt it. Your contribution to the Cyran war effort will be remembered, though. We'll put you in for a medal."

"Cyre?" Ruudrik's brow furrowed. "I thought they lost war."

"Not quite yet," Razze said, and sheathed his blade. He turned to Sam. "I take it that the next step in the plan is to steal the stash from the thieves' guild and take it back to the ship?"

"Yep."

"I don't suppose you've given any thought as to how, exactly?" Neana asked sourly.

"Sure did. We walk in, and take it. And beat up anyone who tries to stop us."

Razze opened his mouth and closed it with a snap. Then he grinned. "I like it. It suits us."

"We're not planning people," Sam admitted. "So I figure we'll fall back on our core skills. I have," she put an arm around Razze and Neana's shoulders, "the two finest half-elven sword masters in the whole country with me. I myself am not exactly unskilled in the art of waging war. There are only, what, thirty common thieves standing between us and a whole chest full of shiny, shiny metal that we desperately need?"

"And I'm immortal," Razze added.

"And he's immortal; I was about to say that, thank you. Frankly, they don't stand a chance against us."

"Look," Neana said, "you had me at the promise of violence. No need to lay it on any thicker. But what do we do about shorty here? We set him free, and he'll warn them that we're coming."

"Ruudrik will not betray nice captors!" The goblin smiled in what he probably thought was an ingratiating manner. "Not killing buys even more loyalty than money. You let me go, I not tell anyone about anything. Ever. Not talking is great specialty of mine."

"Oh, please," Sam replied. "You're a bagman. No one trusts a bagman. You'd sell both us out at the drop of a shoe. It's practically your whole job description; tattling on your pickers if they even think about skimming a couple of purses. If you were at all trustworthy, no one would ever trust you."

"Do you ever even listen to yourself?" Razze asked mildly.

"No," Sam continued, "I think we'll leave you here until we get back. We'll untie you when it's over and we have the money."

"You leave me tied up?" Ruudrik was outraged. He wobbled so hard he tipped over and fell to the ground. The goblin grunted and writhed until he was lying on his side. "You leave helpless… humanoid… all alone in back alley in bad part of Q'Barra? Might as well slit my throat now and save some halfling the trouble."

"Hmmm… Good point. We'll have to find somewhere safe to stow you."

Neana sighed. She walked over to the goblin and, with no discernable effort, picked his trussed, wriggling body up and slung it over her shoulders. She found a barrel a few feet away and shoved the lid off, then dumped the goblin feet first into the empty barrel. "There. Problem solved. Can we go now?"

"Oh, very good." Ruudrik's voice boomed from inside the barrel. "I just sit here rotting, then. Perhaps I die of thirst, instead."

Sam tipped up the lid and dropped a canteen into the barrel. "Here you go. And here's half the other half of some meat on a stick I didn't finish this morning, in case you get hungry. It was pretty tasty. Oh, sorry. Your hands are still tied. Well, you can still kind of pry the lid off the canteen with your teeth, I guess." She dropped the lid back in place. "We'll be back to free you in a few hours. Don't make too much noise, and you should be fine. Hardly anybody walks through this alleyway."

Ruudrik said something guttural in goblin. Sam replied with something chipper in the same language.

She hammered the lid in place and turned to give them a bright, cheery smile. "I think he's taking it rather well, don't you?"


	6. 5:Wherin Bryce pushes his luck

This bit was overly indulgent, but please indulge me. I always wanted to do a high-stakes card game.

The next chapter is done, and awaiting proofreading, and the chapter after that is half way written.

* * *

Bryce flipped the corner of his cards up, checked the edges, and struggled not to grin. A full, natural red flight! Olladra's Luck, an almost unbeatable opening hand! That made two times in the same night, and he wasn't even cheating, this time. Bryce paused. He had to be careful not to let the slightest hint of his good fortune show on his face. Miming boredom, he dropped the cards face down on the table. "Alright, ladies. Ante up."

"What's your hurry, _pftha_?" Geffen asked mildly. Geffen did everything mildly. Geffen could slit a throat mildly, and probably had. Bryce hated him, but was careful not to let it show. The tiny Halfling man was dangerous, or at least liked to appear dangerous. He always wore black, slicked his hair back using some kind of greasy oil, and liked to flash around a pair of silvered hatchets that, he claimed, were ancient ceremonial weapons from his tribe. Right now he had one out at the table, and was nonchalantly cleaning his fingernails on the thin silver spike that counterbalanced the crescent. Most of the time, that kind of posturing would be a giant, glowing Arcane Sign marking the posturer as a first class ruckles: a chump, an empty threat. It was the sort of thing a green kid did to build his rep; it smacked of trying too hard. But on Geffen, it just looked spooky; those sleepy, half-lidded eyes didn't seem to care if they were looking at a man or a corpse.

Someday Bryce would find out what _pftha_ meant in Halfling, and on that day there would be a reckoning.

"Bryce wants us to think he has a big hand," Dalla purred. She fanned her cards and used them to shade her ample cleavage. "Doesn't he know old Dalla can read him like a second hand novel?"

"If you can do that," Bryce said, "you know it ain't the only thing I've got that's big."

"All men seem to think so," Dalla said absently. Bryce gave her a speculative glance as she studied her cards. She was a fine piece of talent, no two ways about it. She knew it too, and that was the problem. More money had passed through Dalla's hands than Bryce could probably ever hope to steal, as she conned men (and one woman, they whispered, though not so she could hear) into fighting for the chance to give her their hearts and wallets. Jaded didn't even begin to describe her. She was a sly chisel, not to be trifled. Besides, Bryce knew better than to climb under any girl smarter than he was.

"Can we play now? Or are you two going to rut?" Soren growled. Growled was the right word for it; Soren was as beastly and ugly a shifter as Bryce had ever seen. Dog-faced and hideous and tougher than a sack of dwarves. And a shitty card player to boot. They always made him deal because of his hands: each gnarled, furry finger was tipped with a claw the size of a paring knife. He'd never be able to double-deal with paws like that, and so he was the only one they trusted to handle the cards.

"Ante up," Bruce said again, and they flipped the dragons.

Dalla tossed in a moderate Brass, Soren responded with a pathetic White, Bryce threw in the least of his Reds, and Geffen led by throwing away a surprisingly strong Gold dragon. The game paused as everyone examined it and mentally recalculated the odds. An opening stake that high could bankrupt some of the less fortunate players, like Soren and, tonight, Bryce.

"Throwing away a pretty big card for such a little man," Soren muttered, but his heart wasn't in it. Everyone at the table knew when the shifter had a piss poor hand.

"More to spare where he came from," Geffen replied. He favored Bryce with a sleepy glance that could have meant anything.

"I like… confidence," Dalla said. "In a Halfling. That, a stepladder, and persistence can make up for almost any lack."

"Woman," Bryce sighed, "Can you say anything that isn't lewd? Surprise me, for once?"

"Not at work, hon. On my days off, I'm as chaste as a temple virgin."

"There's a Gold on the table," Geffen reminded them.

Every player put in their stack of coins; silver sovereigns. Fat merchants might play with gold Gailfars, and hick farmers might play for bent copper crowns, but in the Guild, it was always a silver game, and the stakes were always high. The hefty pot sitting on the table right now amounted to half a month's wages, easily. Even Geffen was staring at it with naked greed. Bryce glanced down at his remaining coins: four tarnished silvers. One bad run right now would finish him. He studied his hand again, and his spirits rose. _Not with these cards_.

He had been winning at one point in the night, and winning soundly, until the thrice-cursed Halfling ambushed him. That had been his first natural flight; The Glutton's Flight, it was called. Two fat Blues to swell the pot, and a Dragon lord to claim it. He had been so confident in his hand that he had walked right into Geffen's Druid. The Druid card flipped the stakes when played, giving all the silver in the pot to the weakest flight showing. The Halfling had turned a rat-turd hand into a fat purse without even cracking a smile.

They went around the table, drawing out the gambit. In two rounds it quickly became obvious where each player stood: Dalla had a mediocre hand that had no chance of claiming the pot, so she began stealing back a small chunk of her ante by playing the Thief and a weak White. Soren's hand must have barely amounted to a trickle of spit: he was playing weak Coppers and hoping that the others would think he was chasing a Druid. He was such a bad bluffer, though, that his desperation was obvious. Geffen wore exactly the same expression as he laid down a fairly strong Gold and the Brass Wyrm. It was a good flight, but unless he had a Dragon Lord or the Great Gold Wyrm up his sleeve, he wouldn't take Bryce's Reds with it.

Bryce played his Reds from weakest to strongest, building the flight. When Dalla saw his second Red, she twigged to it immediately. Her eyes flicked back and forth rapidly, from him to the Halfling, and she favored Bryce with a smile. Not scheming, or flirtatious: just a friendly smile. And like that, she'd read the table, seen the outcome of the round, and chosen a side. Girl was quick as lightning. She didn't like the Halfling either, and wanted to see him lose.

And again, Bryce gave some thought to Dalla. She was trim enough, she was smart, – damn smart – and she wasn't a cold-hearted bitch like half the women in the Guild. And while she wasn't really as chaste as a temple virgin, it had to be said that there were a lot of whispers about her, but not much loud talk. She had a man, of course – some thick-headed Deneith mercenary who spent his days running Lizardfolk back into the jungle – but that didn't necessarily mean much: all that said was that she liked them big and dumb and half-way honest. Well, Bryce wasn't small, and was at least _half_-way honest…

Geffen fanned his cards with a flick. "Strong show, _pftha_."

Bryce stared straight at the Halfling, not bothering to conceal his hate. "Yes."

"You can back it up, yes?" He smiled, to try and make it a joke, a game between friends. Bryce had seen more sincerity from a housecat.

"Try it and see."

Tension mounted in the last round. Della played a White, satisfied to finally steal back her starting stake, and settled down to watch the duel. Soren dropped all pretense of Druid chasing as well as a meager Black. He snarled and slammed his remaining hand down with as much force as is possible with the flimsy varnished woodcut cards. "Cheats and whores," he sputtered. "That's all you lot are!" The rest of the table looked on, unimpressed. No one took the shifter's mood swings seriously, least of all himself.

Play stopped. Neither Bryce nor his opponent seemed to want to show their hand.

Geffen regarded Bryce over the tops of his cards. The Halfling's eyes, always sleepy and half closed, were positively drooping. Only a sliver of white showed. "Tell you what, _pftha_: you may show first."

"It's your lead," Bryce pointed out.

"Is it? Well, I am feeling gentlemanly tonight. I yield the order to my tallers and betters."

"No, you first." Bryce said through gritted teeth. "I insist."

"Together? On the count of three?" Geffen suggested. "One… three." He dropped a card.

The Silver Wyrm.

Damn him. The Halfling could ruin anything. Bryce sighed, and dropped his own card. "Big Red."

Dalla raised an eyebrow. Soren grunted, then grunted again when he worked out what that meant. "It's a tie?"

"Wyrm ties Wyrm," Geffen agreed slyly. "So sorry to ruin a good flight, _pftha_. I guess this means a tiebreaking round? I am sure the rest of your hand is as scintillating as what is on the table."

"Not so fast, hon," Della said. "Wyrm ties Wyrm, and there's a full Red flight showing."

"So?" Geffen flicked an annoyed glance at her. This wasn't in his script.

"So –", Della began.

Bryce overrode her. "So that's a solid flight on the table. Three Reds might not beat Gold, Silver, and Brass, but it's still three of the same color. And you know what that means."

"_Black dragon steals_," Soren said in a gruff, sing-songy voice, "_and White steals even more. Blue steals gold from the rich, and Green steals from the poor. But __Great__ Red demands tribute when he opens up the door_."

"I could have done without the singing," Della murmured, "but Soren's on point: a solid flight demands tribute."

"That's right." Bryce tipped Dalla a fierce wink to apologize for interrupting her earlier. "So pay up, little man."

"Of course." Geffin was all offended effrontery. "I know this! I sang that song on Mamma's knee as a little quarterling, back on the Plains. You'll get your tribute. You want coin, or you want cards, _pftha_?"

"Cards," Bryce said, and for the first time ever, he saw Geffin's façade crack. Just a sliver, just for a second, but the Halfling's eyes widened and there was both surprise and hate there.

"As you say," Geffen said. "Most players choose coin, but— as you say." He splayed his hand face down on the table. "Choose. Take a card. I care not."

Bryce's fingers hovered over the spread. He looked, not at the cards, but at Geffen. His finger passed slowly over each card in turn. Geffen gazed back mildly, smiling, not caring, until Bryce's finger hovered just an instant too long over the middle-most card. Bryce saw, or imagined he saw, a tiny flinch. "That one," Bryce said, and drew. Was that anger in the Halfling's eyes? Bryce slotted the card into his hand before daring to look at it.

Then he crowed.

"_Pfiss_!" Geffen said, followed by a stream of unintelligible but angry Halfling.

Bryce laughed, and didn't care who heard. A Dragon Lord! How long had Geffen been sitting on one of the deck's two Dragon Lords? It was the Five Headed Dragon, what noblemen gamblers called She-of-Many-Colors; the one the elves called Tiamat. She was a delightful poison: the strongest card in the game when played with dragons of her own color, but worse than useless when played with dragons of her opposite suite. Oh, this was priceless. It must have been sitting in Geffen's hand like a sack of gold to a drowning man: worthless to hold, but too good to give away. They'd be talking about this in the guild for weeks.

"What is it?" Soren asked. Dalla raised her eyebrow, wanting to be in on the joke.

"_Sharma-__tsen__go__pfiss_! Shit!" Geffen kicked a table leg with all of his tiny might.

"How long have you been holding onto then one, Geffen me boy?" Bryce asked.

"I think I hear someone knocking at the door," the Halfling said sourly. "Why don't you answer it? It's your turn to be the _pfiss-bien__ tam_ Doorman this week."

"In a minute," Bryce said. Now he, too, could hear the knocking, but moments like this were worth savoring. He slapped his new card on the table, face up. "I play the Queen."

Soren chuckled, and Dalla whistled. "The Queen's Flight. Nothing beats that, darling."

"Tell, me, Geffen: how many rounds has this been sitting in your hand? How long have you been waiting for a solid run of Blues or Greens to use her with? The Queen won't play nice with any of your metallics, but she likes my Reds just fine." Bryce loved to gloat. He never got to do it, usually.

Geffen fumed silently, screwing up his eyes and gritting his teeth until Bryce was sure he was going to pop like an overripe melon. Then he exhaled it all in one great breath and when he looked up the old, laconic Geffen was back. "It's only a game, _pftha_. And I still have a card to play."

"Go ahead." Bryce was magnanimous in victory. He favored Dalla with his most winning smile. See? What a gracious guy I am. Was that adoration on her face? Let's pretend that it was.

Geffen made a great show of examining his cards, picking prissily over each one. In the meantime, whoever was at the Guild's side door kept right on hammering stolidly.

"Can we hurry it up?" Soren growled.

"Very well," Geffen replied. He dropped his card nonchalantly on the table.

The Druid.

"No," Bryce said.

Dalla made a little noise in the back of her throat, like half of a laugh.

"Low flight takes the pot," Geffen said.

"No."

"Oh, yes, _pftha_." Now it was Geffen's turn to chant. "_Thief steals, Slayer kills, and Priest goes before. Princess shines, Wizard mimes, and the Fool __takes__ the floor. But last is first and first is last when the Druid settles score_. Mamma taught me ALL of the old rhyme," he said smugly.

Soren blinked. This was taking a great deal of time to work its way from his eyes to his brain to his mouth, but it finally came out. "You mean I won?"

"No," Bryce whispered.

"Fraid so, hon," Dalla said, not unsympathetically.

"The pot is yours, friend Shifter." Geffen waved disdainfully at a pile of silver the size of his head. "Take it all and deal the next hand."

Bryce turned to the Halfling. "Why? Why do that? You didn't win either."

Geffen stared at him. His eyes were unreadable: they glittered like tiny black marbles behind their half-slit lids. "Because I am a poor loser, _pftha_. Now go answer the door."

Bryce slumped. Sullenly, he scooted his chair back from the table. He made the long loser's march around the table and towards the hallway to the great metal door that it was his duty to watch this afternoon. As he squeezed past Della's chair, she gave him a consolatory pat on the arm. And was the brief brush of her breasts against his bicep more than an accident? Bryce thought that it was.

That was something worth thinking about. A tiny part of his mind speculated, while the rest went on roiling atop an ocean of disappointment and black rage. Fucking Halflings. He never liked them. They were small, and shifty, and they had such tiny, tiny hands. They'd all slit your throat, if they could reach it. And sometimes when Bryce passed by Red Mira's, in the part of Old Street with all the brothels, the two Halfling girls that worked there would yell down suggestively from their balcony. He knew damn well that they were grown women, and they had all a grown woman's parts, but they were the size of children: you couldn't tell him that that was right. It put murksome thoughts in a man's head, it did.

Bryce was in a foul, foul mood by the time he reached the huge iron door. "Still your Godsdamned knocking! I'm coming!" He grabbed the bar and threw back the peep-slat, putting his eyes to the small rectangular hatch.

There was no one there.

"Very fucking funny." He turned to go.

The knocking continued.

Bryce went down on one knee with a grunt. There was another hatch, set three feet lower than the first, for the guild's smaller members. Bryce peered into it. A pair of the ugliest, most bloodshot , and inhuman amber eyes he had ever seen stared back, less than an inch away. He recoiled, falling on his ass.

"No fear, is friend Ruudrik!"

Bryce stood up, grabbing his aching tailbone. "Fucking gobbo. What do you want?"

"You remember Ruudrik, yes? Is being friend?" The pint sized creature thrust its face even closer to the open slat, as if he wanted to squeeze through the door nose-first. Bryce was treated to a scenic view of goblin nostril.

He groaned. "What do you want, Ruudrik? Don't you usually only bother the night shift? They take collections."

"Yeah… True…" The squat goblin trembled and wiped his runny nose before thoughtfully licking the snot off his fingers. It was a sight Bryce knew he would be haunted by for years to come. "Is emergency. Ruudrik needs to come inside. Need to speak to duly appointed martial authority, very much badly."

This took a moment for Bryce to work out. "You mean Tallith? You need to talk to Tallith?"

"Head elf person?" The goblin hesitated. "Yes, that being right. I need to speak to Tallith."

"Can't bloody imagine why anyone would want to talk to him." Bryce shivered. The elf scared him, no two ways about it. Geffen just wanted you to think that he was a killer; Tallith was a killer, and didn't give a damn what anyone thought about it.

"Ruudrik has…. Secret. Yes. For pointy ears only. Big secret. Worth stout money, maybe." Ruudrik gave what he probably thought was a knowing wink. "You overhear much when you are low to ground, like Ruudrik. Is easy to be overlooked."

"I'll bet," Bryce sneered. And then he had a piece of inspiration. He smiled. In his current mood, he really wanted to take out his aggression on something three feet tall. "Sure. Tell you what. You can come right in and speak to Tallith personally. He's not even busy; he's in the back, polishing his knife collection. Sound good?"

"Yessss!" Ruudrik hissed. "Very good."

"All you have to do is tell me the password."

"Password?"

"Sure," Bryce grinned. "Didn't you hear about the password?"

"Of course! Ruudrik hears everything, eventually. I know… password, yes. Know dozens of perfectly good passwords," he offered. "Hundreds, maybe. All very serviceable. You want hear one or two?"

Bryce rolled his eyes. "There's only one password, my little gobbo, and if I don't hear it soon, I'm walking away from the door."

"Oh, _that _password. Of course! Ruudrik know exactly the word you are looking for."

"Good. Then let's hear it."

"It's…" The goblin hesitated. "It's… don't help Ruudrik, Ruudrik know it! It's…"

"Any time now." Bryce tried to stifle a laugh and didn't quite succeed. Fucking goblins! Always good for a chuckle.

"Is it… password?" the goblins said hopefully. "That is good password; 'Password'. Very tricksy."

"Nope. Goodbye, Ruudrik." Bryce's hand went to the peephole shutter.

"No, wait! Is it… Swordfish? Gods? Oh, I know," Ruudrik shouted, as Bryce closed the latch. "Friend! Is it 'Friend'?"

"Friend," Bryce chuckled as he walked away. "Where does he get this nonsense from?"

Tiny goblin wails and plaintive pleas followed Bryce down the hall. He was halfway to the bend in the passage, which led to the little corner nook and the quiet little card table that the Guild's appointed watchmen usually spent their shift clustered around instead of actually watching the door, when Ruudrik broke down in tears. It was pathetic even by goblin standards: huge, gulping sobs punctuated by ear-splitting snivels and the occasional snort, as the goblin emptied his nose into a nearby sleeve. Bryce, for all that he was a thief and a liar, was not a truly bad man. The sound touched his heart with something that might be pity, or at least sympathetic disgust.

Besides, if he didn't let the little bugger in, it would go on all night.

Bryce stomped back to the door, knelt down, and worked the hatch.

"All right, Ruudrik, I'm—"

A fist shot through the narrow opening and, with great precision, struck Bryce on the chin. It wasn't a mighty blow, but with total surprise on its side, it didn't have to be. Bryce reeled, as much from shock as from pain, and only the fact that he was still clutching the door latch in one hand kept him from falling over. The fist shot out again, this time grabbing hold of Bryce's tunic collar. It knotted itself in the fabric and _pulled_. Bryce, still muzzy, watched the iron door approach at great speed.

_Much, much later, when Bryce awoke to find himself in Paradise – or at least the closest earthly approximation, which was being cradled gently in __Dalla's__ lap while she tenderly ministered to his bruised temple with a damp cloth – he would vaguely recall hearing snippets of a strange conversation. While he stared happily upwards into a vast expanse of corsetry, he tried to piece it together._

"I told you it wouldn't work, Sam."

"Ow. Damn, that hurt. That really hurt."

"How was I to know there was a password? He never mentioned anything about a password! If I get my hands on that little goblin, I'll kill him."

"That guy had one tough jaw, is what I'm saying." There was an odd little sound, like someone sucking on something: possibly a bruised knuckle.

Bryce tried to sit up, and then changed his mind when the top of his head fell off. Or at least that's what it felt like: the pain was excruciating. His whole body ached. His arms and legs refused to obey his commands. He groaned when, after a supreme effort, he managed to twitch one finger.

"I told you not to bother, Sam. There's no point in trying to lie your way through the door when you can just pick the stupid lock." This voice was quiet, irritated, and gritty, as if its owner as if its owner had just finished gargling a big glass of sand. It had harmonics that Bryce didn't like, not the least of which was a kind of hostile impatience that put him in mind of his last run in with the city guard.

"Don't worry, ladies, I'm perfectly fine. No need for sympathy here. After all, I only broke one hand: I have another." This voice was male, and boyish, and, judging from its accent, a bit of a toff, but the dangerous kind. The kind of flashy young noble lad that waltzes around in really sharp boots and challenges other lads to early morning duels and gets farmer's daughters in trouble. There were always one or two hanging around up at the palace, stiff-legged as tomcats. The voice was soundly ignored by the other two.

Bryce tried to open his eyes, and succeeded, but the world they showed him was so doubled and blurry and alive with pain that he shut them quickly.

Someone wrapped on the door with a fist. It made a satisfyingly heavy ringing sound, the way that three inches of stout wrought-iron tends to. "Do you see a lock on this door, Neana? Because all I see are a couple of massive dead bolts. And if you know how to pick deadbolts from the wrong side… well, they'd probably be interested in hiring you inside." This voice was rich, mellifluous, and aggressively cheerful, and seemed to be using all its willpower in pointedly not strangling the other two voices. "Anyway," it added, "the plan was sound, _in principle_. It isn't the plan's fault. Based on the information that we had, it _ought_ to have worked. I can't be blamed if reality fails to live up to its end of the bargain."

"Uh huh," the first voice said, disbelieving. "So now what?"

"As I explained, the heart of the plan was always about improvisation." There was another sound, like the soft scrabble of a spider's legs against a tile floor. It skittered and pattered for several long seconds. For Bryce, who was secretly terrified of spiders and insects, this filled his imagination with such nightmares that he had to open his eyes; whatever it was, it couldn't be as bad as the visions in his head.

A long, pale arm had snaked in through the bottom spyhole, and its fingers were playing up and down the length of the door as it searched for the deadbolt by touch. The bolt proved to be a good eight inches beyond its reach.

"Almost…" she grunted. To Bryce's horror, the arm stretched: bones popped and creaked and flesh ran like clay as fingers lengthened and joints dislocated and even the skin changed color as the arm became someone else's arm. Someone much thinner and taller.

"Sam?" the first voice asked impatiently. "People are walking past this alleyway. They're going to notice us, Sam."

"In this neighborhood? I doubt it. Nobody sees nothing, not if they know what's good for them," she grunted. "Anyway, I've nearly got it. I can feel it with the tips of my fingers."

"Can't you just make your arm longer?"

"There's a…" she grunted. "Sorry. There's a limit to how far I can change. It's just flesh and blood, not magic. But I've almost… got… it."

There was a sigh, and then a pop of rushing air. Bryce blinked – even blinking hurt – as a Changeling appeared in front of him. By its posture, it had been leaning heavily against a door; without any support, it fell over.

"Or," it grumbled, "you could just teleport me past the door. That works too. Thanks for the warning." It stood up, brushing dust from the lapels of its coat: Bryce's addled brain was fairly sure that it was a woman, but it dressed like a man – like merchant sailor, in fact – and with Changelings it was often hard to tell. On its way to the door, it tripped over Bryce's sprawled leg.

He groaned.

It turned, and regarded him with surprise. "Whoops. Looks like we have an early riser." The next thing Bryce knew, it was straddling him. Pale fingers prodded his side, pressed against his throat, and peeled back his eyelid. He was treated to an all encompassing view of milky white Changeling eyeball. "Steady pulse. And your eye's moving, so I don't think there's any blood bubbles in the brain. Good: I was afraid he'd killed you." It drew back, and slipped a slim black leather cosh from the sleeve of its coat.

"Friend, I apologize for this, I really do," Sam said. "But I think we'd both be better off if you weren't present for this next bit." And then, as gently as possible, she put his lights out.


	7. 6: Wherein there is uninteresting nudity

The next chapter, as promised, if slightly delayed. Next up: asskicking!

If you like (or hate) it, please review.

* * *

"Get your asses in here," the gatekeeper said. "I can't be holding this door open all day." The shape and voice were that of a stocky human man, but the theatrical wink was pure Sam. 

"About time," Neana grumbled, and strode in. She noticed the body sprawled across the floor, the identical twin to Sam's current form. "Dead?"

Sam looked affronted as he –she— closed and barred the door. "Unconscious."

Neana shrugged. "Dead works too."

"I wanted to talk to you about that: I'd prefer it if we could take the stash and escape without killing anyone," Sam said. Razze nodded his assent.

Neana furrowed her brow. "Why?"

"Because murder is wrong?" Sam tried hesitantly. This didn't seem to pass muster. She sighed, "Because this is a civilized city with a real working government and a city guard that could probably actually find their buttocks with both hands on the second try. If bodies turn up, they won't go unnoticed. And that will get us in trouble. And that'll get Captain Klein in trouble. And that will make him angry. And when he gets angry, he gets…" Sam shivered. "Sarcastic."

"Last time he got angry, he hit me with his shoe," Razze said morosely. "I'd rather not be beaten about the head with footwear."

Sam nodded vigorously. "The way I figure it, right now all we're doing is stealing from thieves. Nothing wrong with that. Everybody knows that stolen property doesn't really belong to anybody, anyway. If stealing once is wrong, then stealing twice… kind of turns the wrong on its head." Sam considered the idea, warming up to it. "That makes it the right thing to do, really. Yeah! It's nothing but the ill gotten gains of prostitutes and con-men and second-story artists. All that money sitting around, in a den of thieves, being put to illicit uses: it's practically our civic duty to take it away from them."

"Amazing," Neana said. "The inside of your head must look like a box of corkscrews."

Sam ignored the interruption. "But killing… well, that's three wrongs. That's one too many. Stealing, we can get away with: it's not as if Mr. Brutus the Head Thief can run to the city guard to complain that someone scarpered off with his valuables. But bloodshed… it's hard to keep that a secret for long. Bodies always surface, eventually, no matter how many stones you put in their pockets. Not that I've ever, you know, done that, but I hear things." Something else occurred to Sam. "And anyway, since we're technically foreign troops on unfamiliar soil, I think that counts as an act of war. And I don't have the rank for that. I'm pretty sure it takes at least an Admiral to start an international incident."

"We could just kill _everyone_," Neana pointed out: quite reasonably, she thought.

"People would notice," Razze said.

"Then we'll kill everyone who notices us killing everyone."

"We'll call that plan B." Sam said diplomatically. "Unless you absolutely have to, I'd feel better if we avoided any bloodshed. And if things take a sour turn… well, try and avoid any actual killing."

Razzed nodded. "We'll do this by shore leave rules, then: stick to fists and feet and the flats of our blades."

"Right," Sam agreed. "Just like the Captain says to do when Tarn starts a bar fight." She considered this, and added. "Or when you start a bar fight. Or when I start a bar fight." Eventually, she continued, "Or when the Captain informs us that he's bored, and its last call and he's feeling like starting a bar fight himself."

"How are you going to manage, Sam?" Neana asked, suspiciously. "It isn't as if you smack them with the flat of an arrow."

She patted her quiver. "I brought blunts. See?" The short, fat black arrow shafts ended not in a point, but in a tightly wound leather cover. Neana remembered them well from her early army training. Getting hit by one of those probably wasn't deadly, but it hurt like a hammer blow.

"Oh, all right, then." Neana muttered.

They prepared in silence: when they wanted to, they could act like professionals. Sam quickly stripped the unconscious doorman and sorted through his belongings, while Razze dragged his limp body behind a nearby chaise longue. Neana threw on her disguise: a stained traveling cloak and shapeless woolen hat of the kind that dockworkers liked to wear. Razze mournfully removed his new hat and fancy waistcoat and dropped them into a sack, to be replaced by a worn vest and a shapeless cap that he pulled down over his pointed ears. Sam looked them both over and judged them sufficiently seedy-looking. Then, with a Changeling's diffidence to nudity, she stripped out of her old clothes and put on the ones worn by the unfortunate doorman. Neana noted, with approval, that she was wearing a thin shirt of silvery chain links beneath her clothes. Her girl was no fool; mithral mail might feel like metallic silk, but it could stop a sword's thrust or muffle a hammer's blow, and it was easy to conceal beneath civilian clothing.

The plan was so simple that even Neana had to admit that it might not fail. Sam would pretend to be the hapless doorman, and Neana and Razze would pass as would-be thieves and cutthroats. If anyone questioned their presence, they would claim that they needed to speak to this Tellith person, which would probably stop any further questions; people seemed to use his name like a magic talisman. That ought to get them far enough into the building to find this legendary stash, and after that, they'd have to fight their way out.

She was looking forward to that part. In all the chaos and confusion, they might even run into Tellith. Wouldn't that be fun?

Neana's armor was in a sack on her back: she had laid certain spells upon it an hour ago that would, at her command, summon the individual pieces of chain and plate to leap out of the bag and affix themselves to her person in an instant. It was a good trick. It had saved her life, twice. Unfortunately, the spell wouldn't work on her sword, which was too large and too full of its own potent magic. Razze pulled her falchion and baldric from the sack they had retrieved from the Mother Bear, and handed it to her.

"I don't see why I couldn't carry it openly," Neana sulked. "Razze got to wear his little toothpick."

"Because the rapier is a gentleman's weapon," he replied. "Whereas your sword is as big as a gentleman."

She drew _Sharneth_ and watched dim candlelight play across the blade's curved edge. It had been crafted over a century ago, and was obviously the product of cosmopolitan Cyre: a two-handed, leaf-shaped blade in the elven style, made from dwarven steel, and forged by human magic. A century ago the Galifaran Empire had been at its peak, and the greatest smiths and artists of every race had joined together with the best craftsman of each Dragonmarked house to advance their arts. They had worked miracles, back then, and would have counted _Sharneth_ one of the least of their works.

Still, it was a damn good sword. The edge was a sharper than any sword had a right to be – a man could probably shave with it, if her were crazy enough – and because it was magical it couldn't be dulled by contact with any mundane substance. The balance was perfect, allowing Neana to wield with ease a sword that nearly brushed the ground when she strapped it to her back. They had thought her crazy, when she chose a sword that large from the royal armory, but she had proved again and again that she had the strength and skill to master it. It was an odd weapon to use at sea, but that was half the reason it worked; it was an _odd _weapon, and enemy marines trained to guard against spear and arrow and hatchet fell by the score to her huge, scythe-like blade.

She had never told them why she had chosen it. She had confessed it to Sam once, in the pit of one long night at sea, as they had shared a leather bottle of wine that they had filched from the galley. In the common tongue the blade was called a falchion, a generic word for any long, curved, or otherwise odd sword. But in elven the word for that particular design was _lathlichan_, which meant "stem of the leaf". It was named for its long, distinctive haft, which allowed for greater grip and leverage, and helped those with willowy elven frames to better use its fearsome length. To the Valenar elves, though, it was called "Thath Vol'tath", which meant "horse chopper", and they spat when they saw one and called all who used them cowards and scoundrels, because its length and stability made it an excellent weapon to use against the slender, fragile legs of their precious steeds. Ever since she had heard that story, Neana had wanted one for her very own; of such were the dreams of her childhood. She had named it _Sharneth_, which meant "Cripple-maker." It was her pride and joy.

She put it away, and did her best to hide it in the folds of her cloak. She couldn't conceal the fact that she carried a weapon, but she could conceal its quality, and the faint magical glow it gave off.

Razze was looking around the entranceway. "Are you sure that this is a thieves' guild? Because it looks just like my grandmother's house."

Neana had to agree. Unlike the rest of the city, the buildings around the docks had been built in a more traditional, wooden-board-and-thatch style, probably to better stand against the wind and weather. This particular one was nice and homey on the inside, with a definite suggestion of doilies.

They prowled about, and discovered that, yes, a little old lady must have lived here once. There were small portraits of children on the walls, the kind that street artists turned out for a copper crown apiece, and stubby end tables overflowing with the type of cheap wooden gewgaws that grandchildren might give as gifts, and dusty old draperies, and... "Is that an antimacassar?"

Razze picked up a fat wooden soldier with a crudely painted Karnathi uniform, and a lever on the back that, when pressed, made him wave a banner. The banner read "Boldrei's Blessings" and someone had drawn in, with a charcoal pencil, "To the World's Best Mum from Jan in the army." Razze hastily put it back. There was a six inch throwing dagger buried in the woodwork next to it.

Sam shivered. "So… do you think the old lady was a thief, or do you think the guild took over the house after she died?"

"Or before she died," Neana said darkly.

"Yeah, I was trying not to think about that part."

Things only grew stranger from there. All the doors leading out of the entrance hall were nailed shut. Sam finally located a false panel in one section of the wall; Neana pulled it aside to reveal a crude hole about the size of a man, leading to another hallway. The hole had the ugly, hacked look of axe-work. They wandered through to find much seedier furnishings, with haphazard stains on floor, wall, and ceiling that revealed years of neglectful housekeeping. Most of the doors in this hallway were nailed shut as well.

"I think I get it," Sam said eventually. "The thieves' guild isn't one building, it's this whole city block. They took over all the houses and shops along this street and knocked down walls to link them all together. Pretty clever. You'd never be able to track the comings and goings of their members; you could walk in the corner butcher shop, duck through a back room, change your clothes, and walk out the back door of a brothel five buildings away. And if the city guard ever did raid the place, they'd find an impenetrable maze. It would take days to search this place, and you still wouldn't uncover every nook and cranny. You'd have to take every room apart with an axe."

"Wonderful," Neana said. "So how are we supposed to find your gold?"

"Head to the middle," Sam replied sagely. "Your criminal mastermind types always make their lairs in the very center of the building. It makes them feel important, being surrounded by underlings on all sides."

She added, "That's where I'd hide a huge pile of gold, if I had one."

The next room they found was occupied. Seated around a table were a somber little Halfling with oiled hair, a rather pretty human woman wearing far too much make-up that Neana mentally classified as a "tart", and the ugliest shifter she had ever seen. All three looked up expectantly.

Neana was a half-elf. This meant that, at some point in her distant ancestry, an elf and a human had fucked. Since then, the elf blood tended to resurface every few generations, as it had in her parents' case, and in hers. She was still mostly human, except that she had pointed ears, good hearing, _amazing_ eyes, and a marked tendency not to age as she got older: she was forty seven, but looked twenty, which could be damned annoying when you wanted to be taken seriously. However, sometimes it seemed to Neana that she had two brains: a human one, and an elven one. The elven one thought deep, slow thoughts, preferred abstract, philosophical ponderings, and had trouble dealing with increments of time smaller than a year. She thought of her human brain as quick and quixotic; it jumped from idea to idea with lightning rapacity, when it wasn't constantly bothering her with demands for food or drink or sex or violence. Sometimes it felt to Neana as if she had a yappy little dog in her head. Her elven brain smugly observed that if this was how humans feel all the time, it was no wonder the world was mired in a hundred year war.

The nice thing about having a human brain was that you could come to conclusions very quickly. She looked to the table, with its empty chair, to the pile of coins, to the discarded hand of cards, and then over to Sam, who was still wearing the doorman's face. _Shit!_

Fortunately, the changeling brain was even faster on the uptake: Sam blinked once in total shock, and then the mask went up. "Looks like I'll have to cash in my stakes a little early," Sam said. She swaggered over to the table and put a covetous hand on the paltry few coins left on her side. "These two assholes," she jerked a thumb at them, as if it weren't immediately obvious who she was talking about, "are demanding to see Tellith, and want me to show them where he is."

"So soon, _pftha_?" Neana felt the greasy little Halfling's eyes wander all over her, and for the thousandth time that morning she felt like she needed a bath. "But I have not yet taken all of your money."

Sam's eyes narrowed: she spoke Halfling. "You'll just have to wait 'til another time, little man."

Neana scanned their faces, searching for signs of suspicion. Sam was good – Sam was amazing, actually; she had the face and voice of the doorman exactly correct – but this was still a chancy con. The tart in the back certainly looked curious, and the Halfling wore an expression of seedy malevolence, but maybe he always looked like that. The shifter was squinting at his cards with two glowing lupine eyes, as if wrath could transform them into a better hand.

"Bryce?" the pretty woman asked, "what took you so long? And what was all that racket?"

"Oh, it was just that damn goblin. Ruud-something." Sam didn't hesitate. She was in her element now, spinning half-truths on the edge of a knife. Half-truths, she always told Neana, were so much more useful than lies. And, as a bonus, she now had a name to match her face. "He was wailing and hammering on the door, wanting a few copper coins in exchange for telling me some stupid rumor. He scampered off, when these two showed up."

"He ran quick enough, when I put a boot in his arse," Razze growled. Oh Gods, was he trying to sound like a thug? He grinned and squinted in what he probably thought was an evil manner, warming up to his role. "Scared the life out of him, I nearly did. I was about to show him the flat of my blade, when he—" His words were cut off in a strangled grunt, when Neana trod heavily on his foot. Gods save her from amateur thespians.

"And who are they?" the tart asked. "I don't believe I've seen them before. New recruits? The Guildmaster certainly is keen on new recruits."

"Soon it'll be standing room only in here," the shifter grunted.

"They're—" Sam began.

"None of your business," Neana rasped. Tart looked affronted, but Neana stared her down. She could stare anyone down.

"They won't say," Sam continued lamely. "They just demand to speak with Tellith. Immediately. But they knew the password, so what can I do? You know how Tellith is."

"Password?" the Halfling asked, and shared a glance with the tart. Neana knew immediately that that had been a mistake. Even the shifter looked up, as if a thought might be making the long, slow, winding trek through his dim mind.

Sam tried to roll over the confusion. "Well, I really need to be moving. Unless one of you wants to show them the way to Tellith's room?"

"He's not there," the shifter grunted. "'He's in the Guildmaster's Office. Getting chewed out for the nasty business at the Baker's place."

"Thanks, that'll save me some time." Sam scooped 'her' winnings into a pouch and ticked it into her belt. She could no more leave free money behind than she could stop breathing. Before she could shut the strings on the pouch, the Halfling tossed in a single silver sovereign.

"That's the coin I owe you from the last hand, friend." The Halfling smiled lazily. "Your silver beat my red, far and true. I always pay back my debts."

Sam snapped the pouch closed. "Err… thank you. Friend."

It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Neana's human side spotted the blur, and, despairing of elven dawdling, grabbed control of her legs and threw her against the wall. A silver flash passed through the space where her head had been, and a vibrating _thunk!_ told her that a sharp object had struck the woodwork behind her. After that, things happened very quickly.

Neana saw the Halfling's hand move, and something bright glittered in it. He drew back to throw another hatchet, and found the sleeve of his shirt suddenly nailed to a wall by a dagger Sam had pulled, seemingly from nowhere. Sam's other hand scrabbled at Neana's side until she found the grip on her bow; she had given it Neana to complete her disguise, and Neana had shouldered it dutifully. Sam jerked it free.

Meanwhile, the shifter stood up, hurling his chair away. He might plod through a conversation like a dull mule, but when he smelled danger he responded with animal reflexes. Muscles rippled and flowed along his arms as he changed shape, growing more bestial. His fangs lengthened in his slavering mouth and his hands, already gnarled and claw-like, thickened into talons. As fur sprouted around his pointed ears, and his face grew into something like a muzzle, he growled a challenge. His challenge was accepted by Razze, by way of a fist to the face. The spry half-elf laughed as he ducked a swipe from the shifter's meaty paw.

_Damnit,_ Neana thought, _I wanted to take the shifter_. Then she noticed that the tart had pushed her chair back and was making complicated gestures. Neana recognized the beginnings of simple but powerful enchantment spell. _Looks like someone is a dabbler in the arcane arts_.

Neana grinned. _Well, I do more than just dabble._

Neana was up and onto the table with a single leap, spraying coins and cards in all directions. As she ran across the table and leapt from the edge, she forced herself into the rote, familiar motions of magic, describing invisible glyphs with her fingertips and muttering the syllables of the incantation. Working magic was like balancing the world's most sensitive scale on the tip of your finger, or the way Sam described picking a lock; you honed your senses until you could feel the shape of something huge and complicated and otherworldly, and twisted your thoughts and words into a more accommodating shape. Like the tumblers of a lock, you made yourself, by sounds and thoughts and motions, into the empty shape of a key: if you were lucky, everything fell into place and it went _click_.

Out of the corner of her eye, Neana saw the Halfling hurl himself at Sam, axe in hand. He was met in midair by one of Sam's blunted arrows. On her other side, the Shifter raked his claws through the air where Razze had just been. Razze spun aside and brought a vicious elbow into the shifter's midsection. _Funny,_she thought_ I never would have pegged him for a bar brawler._

"_Anastri_," Neana spoke the final syllable. She felt the universe go _click_, and her fist was suddenly pulsing with energy.

The other woman was on the verge of completing her spell. It was simpler than the one Neana had just cast, but this street-witch hadn't studied for decades at the Grand Academy in Metrol, or spent tireless hours practicing the rote maneuvers of arcane manipulation until she could even do them in forty pounds of armor and steel gauntlets. She was no battle mage.

Neana hit the tart like a catapult stone, cannoning her into the wall. All the breath whistled out from between her overly-rouged lips before she could speak the last syllable. Just to be certain, Neana clamped a hand over her mouth and felt a pulse as the power of her spell discharged. Every muscle in the woman's body clenched at once, straining against the ungodly power. Her eyes bulged, and then rolled back into her head. Neana let her go, but she remained standing perfectly upright, like a statue.

Neana turned around just in time to see Razze down the huge shifter with a final uppercut. The massive beast-man smashed a chair to splinters as he fell. Sam had her Halfling pinned to the wall with an arrow through the collar of his silk shirt and another through his sleeve. He strained futilely against the bolts: the changeling ignored him and tended to her wounds. As she dabbed at a shallow cut across one arm, she changed shape, reverting to the skinny half-elf form she used when off the ship. "You know, you'd think that the cuts would heal up when you change, but they don't." When she saw the third thief, she gasped. "What did you do to her?"

"Nothing lethal," Neana assured her. "A simple immobilizing spell. Korthir's Paralyzing Touch of the Ghoul. She'll be fine, once it wears off." Neana patted her, and the woman toppled over, falling flat on her face with a thump. "She may have some bruises," Neana admitted.

"And the smell?" Razze was pinching the bridge of his nose.

"That's the 'Ghoul' part. Sickens and weakens surrounding foes." Sam made gagging sounds. Eventually, Neana added, "the caster can't smell it."

"Lucky you."

"Well, that could have gone better," Sam said with forced cheer. "But as long as no one heard the noise, we ought to be—" She was interrupted by the tinkling of bells. It began quietly and far away, but it soon filled the room with a merry jingling. Then, with the sinking feeling you get when you finally notice something that should have been apparent all along, she saw the tiny brass bell in the upper corner of the room. It was on a length of twine that ran along the joinery and, presumably, out the door and down the length of the adjoining hallway.

"Someone heard the noise," Neana observed.

"Damn it."

"Wasn't there a Halfling nailed to that wall a second ago?" Razze asked. The wall was empty except for two arrows and a scrap of black silk.

"Damn it!" Sam wailed.

"If they know we're here I guess I can take off this disguise now," Razze observed. "Good thing, too; this vest doesn't half stink."

"I spent forever thinking up that plan," the changeling sulked. "It could have worked. It _ought_ to have worked."

Neana squeezed Sam's shoulder; the prospect of violence filled her with uncharacteristic sympathy. "It _was _a good plan. It isn't your fault that it went belly up. It happens. Life's like that."

"Really?"

"Sam, I've seen Crown Admiralty think up main battle strategems that didn't last that long, once the fighting was commenced."

"You're just saying that…"

"No, I'm not. Now cheer up," Neana said. She threw off her soiled cloak and snapped her fingers. The sack on her back burst open as pieces of mail and metal plating flew through the air and fastened themselves to her body. Casps clasped and belts tightened and within moments she was wearing her full suit of green enameled mithral battle armor.

"Nice." Curiosity overcame Sam's current desire to sulk. "Does that hurt? Is it uncomfortable? I've always wondered."

"It pinches a little," Neana said absently. "But it beats spending five minutes fiddling with buckles."

Razze threw away his woolen cap and put his feathered hat back on with all the ceremony of a coronation. He drew his rapier. "Ready?" he asked.

Neana slammed her half-helm on her head and drew _Sharneth_. "Ready."

Sam mournfully picked up her bow. "I just thought we could get in and out again with hardly anyone getting hurt."

"It was a good plan, Sam." Neana grasped _Sharneth_'s long hilt in two gauntleted hands. "But now it's time for plan B."

She kicked open the door.


	8. 7: Wherein Neana rides the river

"Are you finished yet?"

"Shtill morking mon it," Sam mumbled. It's hard to talk with a pair of lock picks clenched in your teeth. Sam spat one into her hand, and inserted it into the keyhole. "They have surprisingly good locks."

"Yeah," Razze said. "You'd almost think thieves didn't trust one another."

"One might think."

Silence descended on the room, broken only by the clinking of bits of twisted metal and Razze's impatient pacing.

"Gods, this is boring! You'd think we would have seen _someone_ by now," he complained. "Ever since the alarm went off, every room we've found has been empty."

"Probably waiting to ambush us," Sam said absently.

"Yeah," Razze brightened up. "Maybe."

Neana closed her eyes.

Anyone who didn't know her well would be surprised by what the half-elf soldier was doing now: she was praying. She held one gauntlet to her chest where, beneath layers of mithral, steel, and quilted wool, a red stone pendant dangled between her breasts. She hid it beneath her armor because it wasn't the sort of thing anyone dared to wear openly. It was a crimson figure with the torso and head of a woman and the body and wings of a wyrm; the Fury. One of the six dark gods, from the bad old times: queen of madness and passion, daughter of divine rape, patron of lunatics and berserkers and star-crossed lovers. A god that Neana had served in silence for decades. If others knew of her secret worship, they wouldn't trust her; or at least, they would distrust her more than they already did. The Fury, like the other five dark gods, wasn't a very nice deity. If the gods of the Sovereign Host represented all that was good or noble about nature and civilization, then the Dark Six represented everything morbid and shrouded and unseemly; every dark impulse, every guilty pleasure. Once, in the days before the fall of the great Goblin Empire, the Six had been members of a unified pantheon of gods worshipped across the whole of the continent, but no longer. The goblins had faltered, and then humans came to Khorvaire, and toppled the shrines from the high places. People tried their best to pretend that the Six didn't even exist; the vassals of the Sovereign Host had even managed to get their names removed from the annals of history, so that only the most devout and holy secret cults still remembered their names.

"Szorawai," Neana whispered. A name as dear to her as her own.

Neana had never seen the point in pretending that the dark gods weren't real, just because they were unpalatable. _Life_ was morbid and dark and unseemly, and anyone naïve enough to believe otherwise could expect to measure their remaining future in heartbeats. And because of that naked truth, the dark gods had power: real power. Power they would lend for a price. For instance: hidden in the bilges of the Dire Kitten, behind the roll of spare sails wrapped in oilskin, were a pair of tiny wooden altar, Every time the ship left port, a pair of dead doves, or a handful of ashes, or some scented oils would turn up on top of the altars, as regular as the seasons. No one ever admitted to making the sacrifices, but sailors were superstitious, and if a few dead beards would keep the Devourer from sending his hungry storms, or the Keeper from taking more than his allotted share of the dead, or the Traveler from leading the ship off course, then so be it. Even Captain ir'Arth, a devoted servant of the Silver Flame and as faithful and morally upright a woman as their ever was, turned a blind eye to the practice. She recognized the way of the world.

"What are you doing?"

Neana opened her eyes. Razze was staring at her with half-lidded eyes. He was also idly tossing a dagger into the air and catching it by the handle. If it was possible to die from boredom, he was entering his death throes.

"I'm going over spell forms in my head," Neana lied. "To keep them fresh, for casting."

"Oh," he said, and went back to flipping his knife.

Sam gave her a look. Sam knew. Sam did _not_ approve.

Neana closed her eyes, and let her lover's disapproval roll off her back. It was an old argument, and wasn't going to be won this day. Sam was a heretic: an agnostic. She didn't necessarily believe that the gods didn't exist; she just didn't think that they mattered. She made the barest perfunctory gesture of respect towards the Traveler, the reputed creator of changelings and shape-shifters, mostly out of habit. She didn't do as Neana did. She didn't talk to her god.

It wasn't praying as most people thought of it. Neana knew how prayer was supposed to go, and this wasn't like that. She had been to civilized churches, on ceremonial occasions, and as a curious outsider she had really listened to the words of the prayers. Most worshipers tried to barter with their gods to gain help with their problems, or thanked them for the blessings that they had already received. Neana never bothered with that: you couldn't barter with the queen of madness. You _could_ offer a sacrifice to her and hope to receive a boon, but the Fury delivered her boons haphazardly, and they were like to be a torment as much as a blessing. Nor was Neana thankful for the passions and bloodlusts that occasionally seized her. She hated them. She knew she would probably have lived a happier life without them. If the Fury had never come into her life, she might have been at peace.

_And if wishes were __chickens__, beggars would eat __meat__ every day._ Neana stroked the scar at the base of her throat. The world was as it was, and no changing it. The sooner you got to grips with that fact, the better. The darkness was real, and you could either run from it, or walk into it with eyes wide open.

Neana emptied her mind, and pictured the face of the man who had killed her parents. Forty odd years hadn't dulled that memory one whit. _Szorawai_ she thought, and offered her hatred up to her god. _Let the fury flow, __Szorawai_ After that, everything was easy.

Click!

"Got it!" Sam cheered. Despite her excitement she stowed her lock picks back up her sleeves carefully and methodically, like a good soldier. Then, when Neana and Razze were ready, she turned the handle.

It clicked again.

The ceiling caved in.

Sam and Razze hurled themselves to the ground, covering their heads with their arms. Neana's elf brain had a moment to think "Do ceilings always fall that slowly?" before she was plunged into darkness.

There was no pain. No agony. Just an uncomfortable smothering sensation accompanied by total darkness.

_Am I dead?_ Neana wondered. _Is this what __Dolurrh__ looks like? __The land of the dead?_

When Neana had lived in the orphanage, she had been given a rudimentary education by Goodmother Kessler. Her lessons had mostly consisted of cleaning, sowing, scullery-work, and all the other pointless drudgery that the decrepit old crone had considered important to the rearing of a proper young lady, but twice a month a lector had wandered over from the Temple of the Host to instruct them in religion. The fat, blotchy pederast had spent most of his time leering at his young charges, but somewhere between painful pinches and knowing winks he had managed to fit in lessons about the gods, both light and dark, and the realms beyond this world.

The land of the dead, he had said, was endless and empty and grey; the souls that went there were bathed in the crushing, dull emptiness until they forgot who they were and began to fade from this world. She had been fascinated. "What happens next?" she had asked, and he had pretended not to hear her hoarse whisper. Young Neana, unperturbed, had marched up to the front of the classroom and tugged on his patched blue. She was used to people ignoring her: in those days the scar on her throat had still been a livid red welt, and her raw vocal chords had been even less pleasing to the ear. There were thousands of casualties and cripples from the Last War lining the gutters and institutions of Khorvaire, and people found it easier to ignore them than to acknowledge them. "What happens next?"

He patted her absently on the head and pushed her away firmly. "No one knows," he said. Then, realizing that this admission didn't sound very scholarly, he quickly added "There is much dispute among learned men. Some think that the souls reincarnate – that's another word for reborn, my young ladies – into new bodies as infants, to go through the cycle of life all over again. The mists of Dolurrh make us forget, they say, so that we have the opportunity to start anew in the next life. Of course, others think that the souls go to sleep, to await the end of all days, when Khyber finally breaks his bonds and the great dragon Eberron will wake up to do battle once more."

After she grew up, and ran away from the orphanage, Neana had learned that the worshippers of the dark gods had another version of this story, in which Dolurrh was a place of eternal torment for the teeming masses of humanity, the weak and mundane herd; cursed to dwell in death as they had in life, surrounded by tedious monotony. Only the truly faithful, or those who lived the kind of bold, memorable lives that attracted the attention of the gods, were rescued by the Keeper and taken to dwell with the Six in a kind of paradise.

That's why Neana had expected that her path would eventually end in judgment, or at least a dull, somber sea of amnesiac ghosts. Certainly not this total darkness. She squeezed her fist and felt the familiar resistance of wood and leather wrapped around steel. _I still have my sword_, she thought. _And it feels like I'm wearing armor. I don't think you get to take it with you, so…_

Neana stayed true to her nature: she attacked. _Sharneth_ found purchase in the darkness, and tore a great hole. Light streamed through, and Neana followed it, stepping through the tear to find herself…

Back in the hallway. And surrounded by blades.

Later, much later, Neana would have to admit that it was a very clever trap. Sam, with professional paranoia, had checked the hallway and door for traps, and had found nothing. No poison needles, no tripwires, no pressure plates. That's because there was nothing to find: the hallway wasn't trapped, it _was_ a trap.

The whole thing.

Neana had never been stationed at a castle, but she was familiar with the concept of a murder hole; a hole in the ceiling of a gateway or passage through which defenders could fire arrows and pour burning oil on anyone trying to siege the gates, without fear of reprisal. They were a brutal, brutal defense, and one of many reasons Neana was glad that she had joined the navy.

The guild thieves of Newthrone hadn't built murder holes, they'd built a whole damn murder hallway. The guild headquarters was built from a maze of shoddy, creaking little shack houses and shops that all abutted one another in the crowded docks district of Newthrone, where half the drunken, leaning buildings used the walls of their neighbors for support. As the guild had grown in membership it had swelled in size, and whenever the current guild hall got too crowded they simply evicted the people next door, hacked a hole in the wall, and created a new annex. It made for a good screen from the prying eyes of the city watch, but it had a dozen entrances, far too many to defend against an outside threat. When the alarm sounded, the thieves must have retreated to their inner sanctum: a huge warehouse that leaned against the south row of houses. The warehouse was another maze, this one made up of crates and containers stacked haphazardly, probably all cargo "disappeared" off local ships by sly stevedores. It had only two entrances: the well guarded main door, for the loading and unloading of newly acquired swag, and the secret rear entrance.

This was the trap: a hallway leading out of an adjoining house had been seamlessly extended so that the hallway continued _into_ the warehouse. This new, fake hallway was painted and fashioned to match the décor of the abutting house, but its walls were made with wooden panels that could be slid aside to make doors and arrow-slits, and its ceiling wasn't wood at all, but a canvas tarp painted to look like a ceiling. The fake hallway jabbed into the warehouse like an accusing finger, with plenty of clear space around it for defenders to gather and a pair of high wooden platforms flanking it, from which archers could crouch and rain arrows on anyone trapped inside the little murder-hall.

All of this Neana saw within the first five heartbeats. Her inner veteran – the part of her that had survived a decade-and-a-half in service to the most beleaguered nation in the longest war in human, elven, or dwarven memory – snapped to attention. It counted every unsheathed blade, numbered every pointed arrow, added them up, divided by the number of her allies, and produced one simple result: she was fucked. She, Sam, and Razze were outnumbered ten to one, at least, by a foe holding the superior position and commanding the high ground. If the thieves hadn't loosed an arrow yet, or shoved a spear or short sword through the open hatches, it was only because they were too busy gloating.

"All right then," Neana said. A strange peace settled over her as Razze and Sam crawled out from underneath the fallen canvas. There was nothing she could do: she couldn't run faster than ten arrows and she didn't know a teleport spell with enough range to take them to safety. She gripped _Sharneth_ and bared her teeth. "Always knew this day would come, didn't I?"

The other two assessed the situation as quickly as she had. Razze bared live steel with a smile; maybe the fool really did think himself immortal. Sam drew her bow and pressed herself against Neana, back to back. That felt good; if she was going to die, she wanted to go in good company. She wished she could think of fitting last words to say to the other woman, but try as she might, Neana drew a blank. Maybe she'd see Sam on the other side: she hoped so.

The changeling stared into the ring of circling steel, and whispered, "Why aren't they attacking?"

They attacked.

A dozen thieves threw back the wooden panels that made up the hallway's walls and dived through. They trampled on e another in their haste to get through the thin wooden hatches. In seconds she and Sam were completely surrounded by grubby looking men and women with weapons –and, in some cases, fangs – bared. _This is__ fucking stupid_, Neana thought, as she parried a clumsy dagger thrust. _They should have used the archers. They s__hould have used spears. That's __the whole damn point of building a murder hole: to attack with impunity._ With the screeching sound of metal on metal, an errant knife scratched a line across her back-plate. Neana spun and smashed the thief in the face with the pommel of her falchion. He fell to the ground, holding a handful of bloody teeth, and was promptly trampled by his fellows as they clamored to join the fray.

_This isn't a battle, it's a mob. _

Beyond her ring of foes, she saw Razze eschew his rapier in favor of his fists. As one she-dwarf attempted to brain him with a wooden cudgel, he ducked under the blow, grabbed her arm, and used the momentum of her charge to throw the dwarf into another cluster of enemies. One of them, a huge, hairy bugbear, kicked her out of the way without breaking stride. Neana noticed that both the Bugger's fists were wrapped in weighted leather thongs, in the manner of street-pugilists, and she winced as he delivered a vicious body blow to Razze's kidneys.

_No, i__t's a fucking bar brawl!_

Another thief charged at Sam, and discovered too late that a longbow was no less accurate at three feet than it was at thirty. He took a blunted arrow to the gut and fell; before he had even hit the ground, Sam had two more drawn and nocked. She fired without bothering to aim, shooting arrow after arrow into the crowd as fast as she could draw and loose.

Another blade glanced off the mail sleeves that protected Neana's arms, and she uttered a quick thanks to the dwarven inventor of mithral-steel alloys. The thieves weren't used to fighting armored opponents, and they were probing to discover a chink to slip a blade into. Given enough time, they'd find one. Neana screamed two syllables in draconic, felt the familiar tingle of accreting magic, and an instant later a gout of violet arcane flame engulfed the curved blade of her falchion.

_Sorry, Sam. __Looks like we won't be able to avoid __dropping bodies_

And then she discovered that it didn't matter. Her assailants mobbed her, grabbed at her, doing with their flailing flesh what they couldn't with their knives and clubs. She tried to bring _Sharneth_ down in a decapitating arc, but there were too many hands gripping the hilt. She could do nothing but flail her sword wildly. Some thieves tried to tug it out of her grasp, while others seized her arms and tried to pull her to the ground, or grabbed her back-plate and tried to pry it off her body. Neana screamed in incoherent rage, and then gasped in pain as someone tugged her helm off, taking what felt like half the hair on her scalp with it. Her hair, which had been tied back with a twist of leather, fell loose around her shoulders and in front of her face. _I wish I hadn't let it grow so long_, Neana thought dreamily, as someone grabbed it and yanked her head back, baring her neck.

She knew what came next. Steel against her throat.

Suddenly she was nine years old, again. Her parents lay dead on the floor of their little farm house. They'd tried to defend their home from invaders: they'd failed. The Valenar elf's hand held her head still as his watered steel scimitar kissed her throat. Neana screamed. He drew a line across her throat – _through_ her throat – and the front of her dress ran red. The Valenar dropped her, left her for dead. The Last Mercy, they called it. Better to be dead than to live in ignominious defeat. Better to be dead than an orphan, eternally alone. Better death than living ignorance, never knowing one's ancestry, forever cut off from the undying, continuous chain of glorious deeds that made up the history of a people.

They really believed that. That's why they had to die. All of them.

Neana snapped back to the present. Steel against her throat. It kissed the old scar.

"Not again," she whispered.

She pulled _Sharneth_ free of grasping hands, but she was still too hemmed in to use it properly. Instead she brought it close to her, brought it down until the blade was bare inches away from her face, even though it still blazed with magical fire. She held her flaming sword in her hands like a young bride clutching her bouquet of wedding flowers to her bosom.

The heat was monstrous. It dried her eyes to stark little marbles and cracked her lips. It baked the air within her nostrils until each breath seared her lungs. Her face felt tighter as her skin shrank in the heat, and she watched strands of her hair flare into ash as they wandered too close to the flame. But even so she smiled, because she felt the hand holding a knife to her throat withdraw as the fire singed its fingers. Neana used the freedom of movement to leap, slamming her head backwards and upwards, slamming the person behind her in the face with a satisfying crunch.

That felt good.

"Who else?" Neana rasped. She whirled her flaming sword and the ring of thieves expanded, its members drawing back in fear, giving her room to maneuver. She almost grinned before she realized that it also made her an easy target.

Whap! came the sound of sinew slapping against wood, followed by the dreaded hissing of arrows in flight. The noise keyed into reflexes honed by two decades of soldiering and sailing, which grabbed ahold of Neana's limbs directly without bothering to pass through her brain. She ducked and knelt, making herself a smaller target as she tried to locate the arrow's trajectory, which was why the arrow passed over her head instead of through it. _Damn_, she thought, _I forgot about the archers._ Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Razze grab the bugbear's arm and spin it, using the huge thug to catch two more arrows with its meaty shoulder. The overgrown goblin just growled, broke the shafts with a sweep of its arm, and kept on swinging at the half-elf.

"Unn…," Sam said, from somewhere to Neana's left. It was amazing how much doom the changeling managed to fit into one little syllable.

Neana turned in time to see the Sam staring dreamily at the shaft of the arrow that protruded from the center of her stained, stolen shirt. "Nnnnnnnnn…" she muttered: there didn't seem to be any breath in her. Sam reached out and gently touched the feathered shaft poking out of her chest, as if wondering where it had come from. She turned to Neana, her face a portrait of childlike confusion, stumbled, and fell. Then the crowd of thieves descended on her, and Neana could no longer see her.

"Sam!" Neana shouted. Tried to shout, anyway: her damaged throat wouldn't let her be heard over the din of battle. The old familiar feeling washed over her then: blind, seething anger. Anger at herself, and her wretched impotence, and her inability to stop people from dying. Anger at the thieves, the animal street rabble that pawed and clawed at her. There was even a small and shameful thread of hatred for Sam, for being weak enough to die on her. She felt, physically felt, every heartbeat pounding in her chest like the tolling of a bell. The blood pulsing in her veins sang a song of Fury.

_Kill them. Kill them all. _

She couldn't tell if the thought was hers, or if it came from somewhere else. That happened to Neana sometimes: not voices in her head, but impulses. The feeling of another presence, just behind her shoulder, wanting her to smash and maim and kill. She used to think she was a little crazy, but then she met Sam, who told her about the Imp of the Perverse. The imp was the little voice in Sam's head that told her to make a bad situation worse; to not only play Three Dragons with marked cards, but to dip the pocket of the first person to call her a cheater. And then she'd dart out of the tavern with a grin and a laugh, clutching a purse full of copper and leaving a pile of silver sitting on the table. Maybe everyone in the world had a similar imp sitting on their shoulder, but Sam _listened_ to hers.

Neana listened too. She acknowledged her hate, but instead of letting it control her, she channeled it. She couldn't control it – by definition, passion was uncontrollable – but she could channel it, and part of her could remain untouched by it. _My anger is a river,_ she thought, going through the old mantra, _a surging, swelling torrent of rage. I can drown in it, or I __can swim with it, __and be moved by it, and ride upon it__Szorawai__ is my raft. __ If I ride the river, I will reach the end alive._

Neana blinked. She was back in control of herself. Only heartbeats had passed since she saw Sam fall.

Neana tried to advance to Sam's last position through the milling throng. There were thieves in her way, but _Sharneth_ flashed, and then they weren't thieves any longer, just bodies. A lone female shifter darted in front of her, barring her path. She had feline eyes, tufted ears, and a mouth full of protruding needle-like fangs. Incongruously, she was also wearing a fine brocade dress with a bumroll and round farthingale, but it didn't seem to be slowing her down. Neana's hand snaked down to her belt, which was lined with pockets containing the few physical components she needed to cast her spells. She grabbed a pinch of grave loam and crushed it in her gauntlet, feeling a pulse of dark energy. The shifter lunged, her jaws opening impossibly wide as she went for the throat, but Neana stopped her by ramming a fist between her teeth. Neana watched in satisfaction as the shifter froze, her muscles clenching, the paralysis gripping her body in an instant. Neana grabbed the shifter statue and hurled it ahead of her, bowling over half a dozen attackers and entangling them in flailing hoop-skirts, but it brought her no closer to Sam.

And then Sam was there, upright, only a few feet away. She climbed over the frozen shifter, holding her nose, while behind her thieves wretched and ran away from the stench exuded by the spell-struck thief. Sam was staring ruefully at the arrow in her hands, and the blood that stained the tip. Only the tip. There was a ragged hole in the front of her tunic, and beneath it Neana could see the glitter of silvery mail, with a few broken links.

Neana resumed breathing. Sam gave her a weary grimace, and, not knowing that she was echoing a previous thought, said "Gods bless the dwarf that invented mithral chain."

The next instant they both ducked instinctively as hissing arrows filled the air. This time missles only struck a few unlucky thieves. "They're firing indiscriminately," Neana muttered. "They don't care if they hurt their own."

"No," Sam said. She pressed her back to Neana's and loosed an arrow. "It's more complicated than that." She hesitated. "I think it's politics."

"What?"

One of Sam's arrows hit a bowman standing high above them on one of the wooden archery platforms. He didn't fall from his perch, but he did drop his bow, which fell a good twenty feet into the crowd of warring thieves below. "Look at the archers: they're all dressed alike. Black and purple. So is that Bugbear that Razze's beating on, and a few of the bigger thugs too. I'm guessing those are the Black Fists that Ruudrik told us about."

"Tellith," Neana grunted. "Tellith and his crew." Suddenly she wanted to hurt someone even more than usual. She tripped a charging thief and stomped neatly on the back of his knee as he hit the ground. Something snapped, and he showed no sign of wanting to get up. Now that Sam mentioned it, she could see a few hulking shapes wearing similar black shirts near the back of the melee. They were hobgoblins and orcs mostly. They seemed to be urging the others forward into battle.

Another flight of arrows fell, and this time it was obvious that most of the archers weren't even aiming at her or Sam or Razze. More thieves fell, and the ground was now littered with groaning casualties. There still didn't seem to be any end to the attackers stepping through the wooden paneling.

Her eyes narrowed. "That's why this attack is so stupid. If they had stood back and actually used those murder holes, we'd be dead by now."

"Right," Sam said, and then ducked. The blade that had been about to take the changeling's head off skittered across the backplate of Neana's armor. Neana spun and laid the thief out with the back of her steel-plated hand. "Sorry about that," Sam said as she rose. "Yeah, politics. Thieves' Guilds always have warring factions and lots of internal strife: no honor among thieves and all that. I'm guessing that Tellith is using us as an excuse to clean house on some of his rivals. Most of these idiots would rather be fighting each other than fighting us. Hells, the Black Fists are probably the only thing holding this ambush together…" Sam trailed off into silence.

Neana turned, and caught the other woman's eye. She'd known Sam long enough to know how Sam thought; to be certain that they were both thinking the same thing. "I'll get Tellith," she said. "You know what to do down here."

"What about Razze?" Sam asked. They both glanced in his direction. Razze had tripped the hefty bugbear, and he was using the opportunity to repeatedly kick the prone figure in the crotch. The ring of thieves surrounding the impromptu duel ought to have been stabbing him in the back, but they appeared to be paralyzed with wincing sympathy.

"He'll be fine," Neana said flatly. Then she leapt.

Her wings came to her a pace above the ground, feathered and ephemeral and black as night. They beat once with a great _wumph_, wingtips meeting just above the ground, and a dozen thieves were pushed back with the wind of her rising. She must have been a majestic sight as she soared above the battlefield; she certainly made a tempting target. A pair of archers loosed arrows in her direction, but the shafts passed harmlessly through her huge, intangible wings.

Below her she saw Sam turn around, suddenly alone and surrounded by enemies. The changeling turned to face the nearest advancing thief – a skinny bald man with eyes set too close together in his head – and briefly blurred. Now there were two identical bald men: one carrying a knife and wearing a shocked expression on his face, the other holding a bow and wearing a torn tunic with a bloody hole in the front. The second, bow-wielding man spun on his heel and lashed out behind him, punching a confused onlooker in the face. It couldn't have hurt much, Sam being dreadful at hand to hand combat, but it served its purpose. The punched thief, a scowling woman so broad and short than she might have been mistaken for a dwarf, reeled in pain, clapping one chubby hand to her face. The disguised changeling ducked and dove sideways into the milling throng. When the round woman opened her eyes again she saw the original bald man standing in front of her with a bemused look on his face. She screamed and charged him, swinging a length of broken plank, and, incidentally, striking three other innocent bystanders with her atrocious aim. This immediately earned her three new enemies for life, who all balled up their fists and joined in.

In moments the crowd below Neana was a chaotic, pitched battle. It was a page straight of the big book of changeling survival tricks. The Newthrone Associated Guild of Thieves, Cutpurses, and Ne'er-do-wells was a dry box of tinder at the best of times, and Sam had dropped one fat mother of a spark. They seemed to be doing a much better job of hurting each other than they had been at hurting the three Cyran soldiers.

Neana landed on the high wooden platform like an avenging angel. The first archer she saw took one look into her icy blue eyes, dropped his crossbow, and fled for the rope ladder. Neana knew she had very impressive eyes: large, delicately slanted, and a deep, vibrant shade of blue that burned like cold fire when she was furious. Which was most of the time. She strode across the swaying wooden boards, intent on the crouching figure that must be Tellith, who was sighting along the length of a quarrel at a figure beneath him. He seemed to be unaware of her. There was another archer in her way, but a quick booted kick sent him screaming into the crowd below.

"Tellith," she whispered. _My anger is a River._

The elf must have only been feigning concentration, because he rose and fired his crossbow at her in a single fluid motion. Neana spoke one short word and the air in front of her face hardened into a translucent disc that deflected his quarrel. Tellith only smiled.

He was tall, and thin, and every inch the elf. He wore simple yet stylish street clothes: a black silk shirt whose cut showed off his wiry muscles, and baggy black trousers above oddly flared boots. His long, chestnut hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Another woman might have called his angular features and glinting, emerald eyes attractive, but only if she wasn't paying attention: something about his face spoke of cruelty. The only thing Neana looked twice at was his crossbow, a large two-handed affair with a beautiful darkwood stock, a steel lath, and silver filigree running the length of the weapon.

"You have heard of me?" he said. "I am flattered."

Neana sighed in disapointment. The accent was Khorvairan, the clothes were Brelish, and the silver brooch in the shape of a skull that held his hair in place definitely hinted at Aereni ancestry. She'd been right when she called it in the alley; just another city-born elf, probably a bastard offshoot of some minor nobility. _Too long_, she thought, _since I've fought__ fight a __real __Valenaran__ warrior_She leveled her long, curved sword at him, point-forward, blade-down, in the age-old duelist's salute. "Draw," she rasped. "Draw steel or die." There was no respect in the warning, just the simple certainty that if she didn't let him get his weapon out before attacking, this wouldn't be any fun at all.

His smile flickered, then returned. He grasped the crossbow in two hands, pulled, and the stock came away from the lath to reveal a long needle-like blade hidden in the body. His wrists twisted and it became two needle blades, one in each hand, each mounted to a pair of curved darkwood grips. He crossed them, and the steel flashed in the dim light of the warehouse. Then he settled into his stance: the Dancer. His smile twisted into a crooked smirk.

_My anger is a river_, Neana thought. _I will rise above the flood. I will ride the raging—_

Pain. Searing pain. Her back was a solid wall of agony, and she stumbled as if hit by a hammer. No, not a wall: two bright sharp points of anguish. She didn't need to see the two wooden shafts sticking out of her back to know that she'd been riddled with arrows, or see the crumpled dents in her backplate to know that her armor had born most of the brunt of the attack. She'd forgotten about the archers on the other platform.

Contempt filled her, and a blinding rage, both for herself as much for the men who had shot her. As much for the interruption as for the wound. She waved a hand at them and mentally attuned – _fire burning scorching desert boiling sun__ flickering flame eternal_ – her mind to the pathways of the arcane, and two thin lines of brilliant fire connected her fingers to the chests of the archers. Two of them fell limply from the wooden platform with smoldering holes in their chests.

She turned to Tellith, who hadn't moved a muscle, not even to take advantage of her momentary preoccupation. He was no longer smirking, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. She ignored the pain in her back, prayed that it wasn't a mortal wound, and gestured with her falchion, as if to say "Begin."

He began with the Dancer. She dropped into Stonefoot stance. Steel met steel, and he drew back with a thin slit in his pretty black shirt.

_My anger is a river._

He fell back, slipping into a Diamond Hand stance, and then thrusting forward with both blades, his hands becoming complicated steel flowers in their haste. She dropped into Base of the Pillar, and did give way. He fell away again, this time limping from a kick she had given him with one steel plated boot.

_I will rise above the flood._

Tellith's eyes widened. His swords lashed, and scored glancing blows against her armor, but nothing more. She could place him now; judge the extent of his skill. He was an elf, which meant that even in the city, even if he was just the forgotten black sheep of a merchant house, he'd been trained in the sword. Why not? He was at least a hundred and forty, and almost a century of that spent in wayward adolescence. Plenty of time in that century to devout half a decade or so to the arts martial: after all, it might save his life some day, and long lives were worth saving. He'd learned the footwork, and the forms, and he was as naturally fast and agile as a viper, and that had been enough to content him. And then he had been on the streets, and even the meager sword-skill of a lackluster pupil would put him miles above rank of the common Newthrone brute, who knew how to smash a bottle over someone's head but not much more. So he'd coasted, plateaued, using a little skill and a lot of guile and a knack for looking fiercer than he was to cow the rest of the guild into cautious respect.

Take those hidden crossbow-swords for example: those were all style and no substance. It was a stupid weapon, but it was flashy and fancy and it impressed the ladies. Real soldiers rolled their eyes at that type of thing. It was just asking for the blades to catch in the hidden scabbard, or the crossbow to fall apart when you fired it. Sam might be a sneak-thief, but she would never use a weapon like that: she might hide a couple of knives for walking around the city, but when it came to a real battle she stuck to a stout bow and a regulation Cyran short sword in a scabbard at her waist. Reliable beat fancy every time, on the battlefield.

_I will ride the raging torrent. _

Neana growled. Tellith fell back, astonished by whatever he saw in her face. _Fool. _She spat_Wastrel.__ He was weak. He'd never put in a day of real effort in his entire life_, she thought. She was working herself into a state. _Rich boy._ _Smug __elven__ scum._

_He'd_ never scavenged for dropped coppers in a storm drain in Tronish in order to pay a half-blind old drunk to teach him the sword. _He'd_ never worked his fingers to blisters, then past blisters, until the flesh cracked and pus ran weeping down the fist that gripped the hilt._ He'd _never fought illegal blood-duels in a basement in Making, where rich merchants and jaded, foppish nobles paid to watch men die, to earn enough gold to pay for tuition at an arcane college. _He'd _never bent mind and body into a unified whole, so that magical skill filled in the gaps where speed and muscle would not reach.

Knife Hand Dance met Heart of the Storm. Steel Rain stance was parried by Rising Moon. Tellith attacked relentlessly, yet he always gave ground as he was pushed back towards the edge of the platform. It wasn't that he never struck Neana – she bled freely from a half dozen superficial cuts – it's just that she never seemed to notice.

_Szorawai__ is my raft. I accept the gift of her passion._

Neana paused in her onslaught to survey the battlefield. Beneath her feet, everything was chaos. Thieves brawled amongst one another, the intruders forgotten in the opportunity to settle old debts. As she watched, a lone shifter surged out of the fray, drew back on his great composite bow, squinted eyes that were more than a little rodent-like, and loosed an arrow upwards. It soared out of the crowd and found the last archer remaining on the far platform, who discovered that the wooden planks offered little cover to his legs, and especially not to what lay between them. The blunted, leather-clad shaft wasn't lethal, but the archer probably wished that it had been as he went purple in the face and folded up soundlessly. The shifter turned and waved at Neana, then melted into the throng, already assuming a new face.

The tiny part of Neana that floated above her anger fondly thought, _I knew there was a reason I liked __her_

Razze was worse off, in a way: his face was covered in blood from a long gash just above his eye, and his clothes were torn and stained. His new hat sat cockeyed, but was otherwise undamaged. He stood in the middle of a cleared circle, rapier in one hand, dagger in the other. The thieves had drawn back to form a ring around him, almost like beginnings of a folk dance. The edge of the circle was marked by groaning, bleeding bodies, many of them attempting to crawl away from him. The crowd of thieves seemed to be daring each other to be the next to attack him. No one seemed to want to be the first to try those blades.

Neana drew a ragged breath. For a moment, the torrent inside her faltered. She was exhausted. Her back was agony. She could feel sweat running in rivulets between her breasts and blood doing the same thing down her back. She could feel her joints popping and grinding with every block and counter. She turned to Tellith and let the point of her sword dip.

"You had us, you know. You had us dead," she said. Tellith licked his lips nervously but didn't respond. Maybe he couldn't hear her soft voice against the shout and groans that filled the echoing warehouse. "We're better than you – _I'm_ better than you – but if you had just closed the noose, we would have fallen. No one survives twenty to one odds, not even the Cyran Queensguard."

He attacked, a flickering thrust, but she parried contemptuously. "But no," she continued. "You had to play politics. You had to be an opportunist. You just had to try and climb the bloody ladder and make yourself king of this little shitpile. And what did it get you?" He lunged, and her fist met him halfway with the satisfying crunch of shattered teeth. Blood poured from his mouth and he fell on his ass and then rolled away, ending in a crouch just on the edge of the platform. He moaned.

Neana shook her head. "No more talking."

_My anger is a river._ Heron's Flight met Hunter Beats the Brush. _I will rise above the flood._ His Falling Star stance was countered by her Quenching Iron. _I will ride the raging torrent._ His face became _that_ face, the one that killed her parents and slit her throat, the face that haunted her every waking moment.

He lunged. She parried. There was a brief opening in his guard.

_My Goddess, _she thought, and _For__ you, __Szorawai__all for you_

_Sharneth_ described a low, wide arc that ended deep in the middle of his chest. Neana followed through on the cut, as Master Dorak had taught her to do long ago, lest the blade get caught in bone. Tellith tumbled off the platform, neatly bifurcated by a sword whose edge could leave sharp gashes in stone and steel. He fell – make that splattered – into the crowd below.

That made an end to it.

Neana wasn't really aware of the other thieves melting away, their fragile confidence broken with the death of their most dangerous member. She couldn't recall if she used a rope ladder or her wing spell to come down from the platform. She was only dimly cognizant of Sam jerking the arrows out of her back and fussing over her wounds. They looked bloodier than they were. She'd survived much worse.

Still, she didn't have the energy to resist when Sam hustled her into a narrow corner of the warehouse and stripped off her backplate in order to dress her wounds. Razze stood guard as the changeling produced a roll of bandages and proceeded to plug the two arrow holes. Sam wasn't a very good or tender chirurgeon, but she got the job done. Neana just couldn't bring herself to care.

The end of a battle was always like this for her. Without the passion in her, the great red rage, she was listless and without direction. Only some tiny fragment of her better nature made her check to see of the other two would survive their wounds.

"I'll be fine," Sam chirped. She fingered the hole in her thin mithral shirt. "This old thing saved me again. Just like they say: never leave the ship without it."

Razze carefully straightened his clothes and fussed with the plume on his broad hat. "There," he said, when he finally got it arranged to his satisfaction. "Golden."

"We still have to find the stash," Sam added. "And this Brutus person, if he hasn't slipped out the back. They're probably around here somewhere."

"Over there, I'd say." Razze pointed, and for the first time Neana noticed that there was a little room inside the big, open room, much like the false hallway. It had thin walls made from cheap wood and no roof that she could see, but it was distinguished by the fact that no crates or stacks of boxes leaned against it. It was in a little clear area all its own.

There was a door, they discovered, made from some dark, polished wood with deep red grains and obviously expensive. The effect was only somewhat spoiled by the shoddy wall it was attached to. Neana glanced at Sam, shrugged, and kicked it open.

All three of them gasped in shock.


	9. 8: Wherin property tells its tale

"Wow…." Sam said.

"I can't believe it!" Razze gaped.

"Huh," Neana said. "Well, that's different."

The room was opulent. Not the lavish golden magnificence of a palace, or even the showy, trying-too-hard lavishness of a wealthy merchant's mansion, but the simple luxury of someone who has enough money to fulfill all of their modest desires. The walls were lined with bookshelves, holding more books than Neana had ever expected to see outside of a magical academy. Its floor is only bare earth, but carefully swept, and with a plush fur rug stretching most of the room. The rug caught Neana's eye: it had the body of a bear, but the head of a rather astonished owl. The rest of the room's furniture was ancient and practical, made of the kind of dense black wood and oiled brown leather that she had always unconsciously associated with banks, barristers, and other people who made bags full of money. As for the occupant…

It helps to imagine.

Imagine a statue of knight in armor, made by a sculptor who has never seen a man and has only a dim understanding of the purpose of armor. It is humanoid only in the grossest details – two arms, two legs, and a head – but everything else is visibly _wrong_. Its hands end in three thick, cudgel fingers. Its face is a nearly featureless metal mask, with a skull-like, hinged jaw and cold, gemstone eyes. Its armor isn't a separate protective layer, but a part of it, like an insect's chitinous skin or a turtle's shell. Between the overlapping iron plates one can glimpse its innards – fibrous tendrils of pulpy wood and slabs of granite "muscle"— and this gives it an unfinished, incomplete air.

It is a Warforged: a living weapon. A golem soldier. Forged from steel and stone and wood, and animated by secret and arcane rites. Over the last forty years they have been mass produced by the hundreds to fill the depleted ranks of the armies of the Five Nations.

Neana has seen dozens of them. She's seen them arrayed in endless ranks, their weapons shouldered, as they emerged from the Cannith Forge-Hall in Metrol. She's delivered them by the shipload to the banks of the River Thrane to join in the siege of Flamekeep. She even knows a little of their creation: of the dense and overlapping webbing of spells and runes and resonances that gave mere inert stone and metal a kind of life. But until this afternoon, she has never seen one sitting casually behind a writing desk, reclining lazily, with its arms behind its head.

"That's amazing!" Sam crowed. The Warforged dipped his head solemnly, as if to acknowledge that this is simple fact.

"You can say that again," Razze said. Deeply humbled, he removed his hat and held it to his chest.

The 'Forged's eyes burned with a deep, warm amethyst glow, perhaps in pleasure at their unfeigned admiration. Neana was instantly irritated. "I don't see anything special," she griped.

"Are you joking? Look at it!"

"So what? I've seen a dozen just like it. Hundreds."

"Well… maybe you did," Sam allowed. "Maybe you've seen all kinds of wondrous things. But I didn't go to any fancy wizard academy, and I've never seen its like. Not one that finely made."

Neana studied the Warforged, searching for any signs of special craftsmanship. Nothing. The only marks of distinction she can find are the remains of old battle scars: dents and scratches that have been carefully hammered out and polished away until they are almost invisible.

"Well, they all look alike to me."

"How can you say that?" Razze demanded. He slapped one palm against the desktop. "This desk is a masterpiece. The work of a true artisan!"

Sam nodded vigorous agreement. "That's hand carved mahogany if I've ever seen it!"

Neana's jaw dropped. "The desk?"

Razze crossed his arms and stared at the piece of furniture fondly. "That's a fine, kingly desk. Were a monarch abroad, away from his castle, he would not be ashamed to conduct his court from behind the drawers of a desk like that. "

"If the gods," Sam said solemnly, "required writing equipment, 'twould be fashioned in such a form. It is the very soul of cabinetry. The ideal of desk-ness."

The Warforged's gemstone eyes dimmed. It made a sound that indicated that, if it had had a throat, it would be meaningfully clearing it right now. Neana couldn't help but agree with the thing; she felt like she has lost her grasp on the conversation. Maybe sanity as well. "What?"

"Damn fine desk. That's all I'm saying."

"How sturdy it is!"

"Yes. I 'm pretty sure that thing could deflect ballista bolts."

"Oh, indeed. I sure it could resist many forms of siege weaponry, a desk that fine. And did you notice the joinings?"

"Exquisite. What do you call those little curlicues around the edges of the paneling? Scrollwork?"

"I think so. Or perhaps that's the style that artisans refer to as 'marquetry'."

"No, marquetry has all those little inset pieces. In little patterns, you know? Like a mosaic."

"Is that what that is? I thought that was parquetry."

"No, I think that's only on floors."

"Oh, so it is. So it is."

Something inside Neana very gently broke. Despite her best efforts, she started to chuckle. Soon she was full out laughing: a hoarse, cracked cackle..

"They are making light of me," the 'Forged observed.

She gasped for breath. "No, that's just what they're really like. They do this all the time, sometimes for hours," Then, recalling herself, Neana gripped her unsheathed sword and pointed it at the Warforged. "You. The stash. Where is it?"

The golem leaned further back in its chair, apparently taking its ease, but also putting some distance between it and _Sharneth_'s deadly tip. The chair groaned and creaked beneath the weight of wood and stone. "What a remarkably succinct query. I am sorry, but I do not believe I know what you're talking about. Perhaps you would be kind enough to explain?"

"No." Neana pressed the tip of her falchion to the wooden cords of its neck. "No lies. Tell me where the gold is, or I'll chop you into kindling." With another few ounces of pressure, she felt the cord begin to part, and it oozed a thick, viscous fluid that looked more like sap than blood. "Get the _point_?"

Sam blinked. "Was that a pun? From _you_?" She knew that Neana had once had a perfectly human sense of humor, but that living in a cramped ship with a hundred fellow sailors for company tends to erode every value but courage down to its lowest common denominator, and now the half-elf had only a desiccated husk left.

The Warforged wrapped its huge fingers around the blade and, with no apparent sign of pain or effort, pulled it away from its throat. "Yes, I believe I take your meaning. Very well, in fact. But I don't believe that I can help you."

"Your choice," Neana said, and pointed her finger. Orange flame flickered on the tip. She'd always wondered if Warforged were particularly flammable.

Razze held up his hand. "Hold a moment, before you start any walking bonfires. Let's see if we can talk this one out."

"Yeah," Sam said, and perched herself on the edge of the desk. "More battles are won with words than swords." She turned to the Warforged and put on her most conciliatory smile. "Look, friend, this isn't about you. This is about your boss, and his fortune. You tell us where it is, and we won't hurt you. Promise. On my honor, if you give us the gold, we'll leave you in peace." After an internal struggle, Sam added, "We might even cut you in for a little. A very little."

"My boss?" The Warforged asked, and Neana was again struck by his voice. When you saw the wooden body and expressionless metal face of any Warforged, you expected an equally flat and cold voice, but that was dull, mundane thinking. Warforged were magic, and magic obeyed its own strange rules. A 

'Forged emerged from the creation forges fully formed, already knowing how to walk and talk, and each Warforged's voice was unquestionably unique. Some sounded like the whisper of water over wood and stone. Others like a pleasant young woman. Others possessed, as this one did, a rich, commanding baritone more suited to shouting orders on the battlefield than to a quiet office. Right now he sounded arch. "I believe there has been some misapprehension."

"Don't bother playing stupid. We know all about this Brutus the Heavy. Big mean fella. Treats everyone like dreck and bilge." Inspiration struck Sam. "Yeah! He probably abuses you something awful, if I know anything about how these guilds work. I bet Brutus treats you like a servant, just because you're a Warforged. That bigoted prick. You ought to help us. You don't owe Brutus any—"

"Brute."

Sam wasn't used to being interrupted in mid-spiel. "What?"

"It's Brute, I think you will find. Brute, not Brutus." It made a steeple with two club-like fingers and glanced at them over it. "My name is Brute. They call me the Heavy."

"Ah," Sam said. She slipped off the table and moved to stand next to Neana. "Well, that makes things… different."

"You're in charge?" Neana scoffed. "They let a Warforged be the guild leader?"

"No," Brute said, "I let them be in MY guild." It glared at them. "You are Cyrans, are you not? I recognize your accents. And she," it pointed at Neana, "bears the Cyran royal crest on her armor. And Lieutenant's stars, if my memory is correct."

"So what?" Neana said. She didn't like Warforged acting like real people.

"Neana…" Sam whispered, tapping on her shoulder.

"What?"

"Neana, look at his chest."

Neana looked, and finally saw it. Every Warforged bore a mark on its forehead – some obscure magical symbol, she didn't know what they meant – but some were also marked on chest and pauldron; usually they bore the insignia of their owner. Those that were employed by Dragonmarked Houses bore engraved replicas of their House's marks, those that were owned by private noble's bore their lord's or lady's crest, and the majority, which were owned by one of the five nations, bore the symbol of their country. And there, on Brute's chest, scarred and battered but still barely visible, was the bell and hammer of Cyre.

"Welcome, comrades." Its face may have been expressionless, but its voice was capable of considerable sarcasm. "I would invite you into my home, but I see that you have already destroyed it."

"You were in the army?" Razze gaped. "You're… a deserter?"

"Do not be absurd. Property cannot desert. It can only be discarded or sold." It was amazing to hear so much bitterness from wood and stone. "Were you there when the Messengers took Eston?"

"No," Razze said. "I was too young." But even as he said this, he made the Host's Sign, to ward against evil.

Neana understood why. She had been in the Thunder Sea in the year when Thrane had called the Messengers forth from the plane of Shavarath, the eternal battleground, but even on the far off coast of Xen'drik she had heard the horrible rumors. A hundred thousand Thranish souls had crossed the Brey delta with a pillar of angelic fire at the head of their column. Four archangels, immortal beings clad in golden light and purifying flame, had commanded the mighty host. Nothing could stop them. Their golden swords had slaughtered every Cyran soldier in their way, until finally the winter snows had bogged them down.

"I was there." Brute said. "I saw. It was efficient. Brutal. They were not cruel: they did not ravage the land, but they showed little mercy to its people. They showed even less mercy to the enemy soldiers. To the Warforged, they showed none. The angels had no regard whatsoever for those they judge to have no souls. I saw my people slaughtered by the thousands. Their inert bodies littered the field."

"That's war," Neana said flatly, but even she wasn't sure that she believed it. To the Thranes, the whole affair must have seemed like divine justice; what could be more glorious than a holy crusade? From the receiving end, it just looked like the same old butchery.

"Indeed? Well, you would know better than I. I am sure you have seen many battles. I saw only one. I was with the force sent to retake Kalazart, a newly minted artillerist in the third rear guard. I watched mighty armies thunder across the plains below the city. I saw the Thranes: with their angelic generals preoccupied elsewhere, they were driven back into the Mithral Gate. It was then that I and four other Warforged proudly carried our siege-stave and erected it in sight of the walls of Kalazart. I held the carriage while Sgt. Ferrous traced the runes of ignition. We sent three gouts of acid at the southern gate, before their battle-mages sussed our position. And then the sky rained fire."

Despite herself, Neana felt some small twinge of fellowship towards this thing. She had been a soldier too long not to know the capriciousness of war.

"I was badly damaged, inert. When I was finally restored to functionality, I found that years had passed. The Messengers had been driven back to Thrane by a particularly cruel winter. The army had abandoned me. For many years I served as a bodyguard to the Cannith artificer who had repaired me, but he died of the Yellow Rot in the jungles of Q'barra. So now I am here."

There were several plush, heavy chairs in the room. Sam had drawn one, and now she sat down. Razze was leaning against the wall, listening intently. As the Warforged had spoken, the mood in the room had changed significantly. There was no longer any threat of violence. Without meaning to, they had accepted Brute as a countryman of sorts. It was a Cyran, after all, and there were so few of them left. Even Neana found that she had lowered her sword. She didn't sheath it though.

"Why this?" Sam's gesture took in the lavish office. "All of this. How did a 'Forged come to be the head of a thieves' guild?"

Brute shrugged, a gesture he had obviously copied from a human. It made it look unnatural. "It seemed utterly rational. I require work and coin to survive. While I do not eat, and need no shelter, I do occasionally require raw materials with which to repair myself. In these swampy damps, rust threatens to destroy my iron components if they are not constantly oiled and polished. For a time I performed menial labor on the docks, but I suffered abuse from many humans and dwarves who resented my efficiency. Many employers refused to pay me at the end of my scheduled task, knowing that, as a Warforged, I had no legal recourse. So I set about determining a less humiliating method of acquiring funds. I studied the soft-bodied races. I learned how you work. I came to understand your motivations. They are really very simple. Greed. Lust. Fear. Even among the other Warforged I found this to be true: all lives are guided by very simple levers. Control these, and you control a person."

"Hey," Razze said, "It's not that simple—"

"It really is," Brute said firmly. "As a Warforged, few legitimate options were available to me, but there were many illegitimate ones to be found. I discovered the black market that thrived on the docks of Newthrone. I found the most powerful criminal in the network, a woman named Mila. I finally, after many questions, located her second in command, and I convinced him that I would kill his employer in exchange for money. Instead I betrayed him to Mila, as proof of my loyalty, and became her second. Then I made common cause with her third in command, and together we betrayed Mila, and ruled her enterprise as partners. That was Tellith, by the way. He was always an untrustworthy viper. For all the harm you have done me, I can at least thank you for finally removing him."

"My pleasure," Neana grinned. Sam smacked her leg disapprovingly.

"After that, it was simple. There was no organization before I came. There were only small groups attempting to carve tiny empires out of the city. I convinced them that it would be more profitable to work together; one large empire with many tiny satraps. Each Alley Lord had as much power as they had ever had, but now they shared it. I taught them the value of stability."

"And the stash?" Sam asked, her mind never journeying far from large quantities of gold.

"A chimera. A promise. A reward, to keep them from turning on one another. It exists, but it is not here. I am afraid you have wrought irreparable damage to my organization for no good purpose." Brute crossed his massive arms. "And now I must ask you to leave."

"No."

"These are my terms," it said, as if Neana had not spoken. "If you depart now you will not be followed. There will be no retribution. You have harmed my followers, killed my enforcer, and left my house in dire disarray, but you have not done so without taking many wounds. Once you leave, it will be said that you were fought to a standstill; I still have at least that much ability to plant rumor. Both our 

reputations will be preserved. You will find no better offer. Refuse, and if you do not kill me, you will face the whole wrath of the Underground."

"No." This time it was Razze that refused the 'Forged. "We came for gold. We desperately need money. Without it, we can't afford to resupply, and we'll never survive the trip around Cape Far or the Bitter Sea."

"These are problems, but they are not mine." Brute made a subtle motion, as if its fingers were scratching its forearm. It tugged at something in Neana's memory. "Leave. I would hate to kill Cyrans: I have known some that I valued highly."

"No," Sam said stolidly, "We won't—"

"No!" Neana shouted. She had finally recognized what Brute was doing, but it was too late. His finger completed drawing the final rune engraved on his arm, and he vanished. The next instant, while Neana was still swinging _Sharneth_ in a lethal arc through the space Brute had previously occupied, she heard a dull, wooden sound coming from inside his desk. Suddenly, and without warning, the thin wooden walls of his office fell away, leaving the three of them standing alone, surrounded by sumptuous furniture and an empty warehouse.

"What…?"

"Embedded wand sheath," Neana said bitterly. "It holds wands in a hollow cavity within its body, and it can activate it with a touch. It was slipping a wand into it while it spoke to us."

"So he teleported away." Sam looked appalled.

"No, that wasn't a teleport spell." Neana could feel the residual energies of magic, with senses that had no true name. Travelling magics had a different taste than this. "If I had to guess, I would say it was a wand of invisibility."

"Same difference," Razze said. "He still got away."

"How could he use a wand?" Sam was puzzled. "Don't you have to be a wizard to use a wand? I know not just anyone can do it. I mean, I can't, and I'm pretty clever."

"That's because you don't…" Neana opened her mouth, closed it, and tried out various sentences until she found one that didn't insult Sam's intelligence. She had tried to explain the basic fundamentals of magic many times, and Sam always listened dutifully and attentively, and then immediately forgot everything. Sam and magic just did not get along. It wasn't that she wasn't smart, but she readily admitted that her talents lay elsewhere. "Anyone can handle magical artifacts, but it requires training and patience. There are resonances to manipulate. Circles to complete. Using a wand without innate magical aptitude is like engaging in a battle of wills with the continental bedrock. It's like using your mind as a prybar to open a hole in the world. It can kill the unwary. But if you have had training: if you are, for instance, a soldier trained in the use of magical artillery weapons…" She trailed away angrily. "It was all a charade. He was parading his intentions, and we didn't even know it." She kicked the desk with a steel-plated boot.

Sam winced at the damage to her beloved desk. "Maybe I can track him. The streets were muddy. As soon as he 's out of the building, he'll leave three-toed footprints from here to the city walls."

It was a reasonable suggestion, but Neana was too furious to listen. She stalked out of the 'office' and into the warehouse at large, swinging her sword angrily as if she really expected to make contact with an invisible Warforged. "I don't—"

The world turned white.

To be continued...


	10. 9: Wherein we all learn to respect wands

The world turned white.

Smell came back to her first. The odors of the warehouse – Stale dust, blood, sweat, and the piney smell of the cheap green wood used to make crates – as well as two new smells: the sickly sweet odor of roasted flesh and the acrid stench of…. burnt hair? Next vision returned, and the world ceased being a wall of white and quickly gained contrast. Vague blurs resolved themselves into Razze and Sam, staring at her in open-mouthed astonishment. Her hearing stayed gone, however, and though she saw their mouths working, she couldn't hear the words they were desperately screaming. They began to run towards her. All of this happened in the space of a dozen heartbeats.

"Whuh?" She asked. The sound of her own voice thundered in her head. She didn't hear it through her ears – they still weren't working properly – but directly through her sinuses. She felt hands on her person, and then she was moving backwards, and then—

_Whump!_

—there was a sound she felt in the pits of her teeth, and a massive, coruscating ball of orange flame erupted in front of her. Her eyes watered and the smell of burning hair intensified. The ground directly in front of her crisped and blackened, and the soft dirt floor of the warehouse split and cracked until it looked like a riverbed after a three year drought.

The next thing she knew, she was on the floor in a completely different place, and Sam and Razze were both kneeling over her. There were tears in Sam's eyes. Neana felt her back pressing against a wall of crates. "Whu…" She cleared her throat, which was more hoarse than usual. She could hear herself now, although she also heard a painful, high-pitched keening that seemed to underlie the whole world. "What's that smell?"

"Fried half-elf," Razze said cheerfully. His whole body seemed alive with undirected energy, and he couldn't stop grinning. He had looked like this back on the boat, just before they had begun to duel.

"Are you all right?" Sam asked fearfully.

"And the… burnt hair?"

"Don't worry," Razze said. "You don't really need eyebrows. They're strictly ornamental."

Sam shook her shoulder. "Are you all right?" In her absolute desperation she had lost control of her shape-shifting. Sam had walked into the office wearing her half-elven face, the green eyed, copper-haired form she often wore because she knew that it pleased Neana. Now she wore her naked Changeling face: her thin lips were so pursed that they became invisible and her milky white eyes were wide in stark terror.

"I'm fine," Neana said, and then betrayed herself with a fit of parched coughing.

That sound happened again – the muffled inrush of air being displaced by a torrent of magical flame –but this time it was accompanied by the splintering of wood, and Neana felt the crates there were hiding behind shake with the force of the explosion.

"Fireball," Razze said, grimly and unnecessarily. They'd all seen firewands before, in the hands of enemy battle-magi. They were rare, but incredibly powerful, magical artifacts. A half dozen fireballs could scour a ship's deck clear of life, or set the sails and rigging ablaze, or melt every scrap of metal that wasn't tempered steel.

"I guess he had two wands."

_Whump!_ This time some of the upper crates broke open, showering the three of them with wispy silk scarves in every color of the rainbow. They could smell smoke now, and the crate Neana was leaning against was growing hot.

"How do we stop him?" Razze asked. And just like that, they were professionals again. Razze looked sober and attentive, although his hands tapped restless rhythms on his thighs. Sam passed a hand over her face and left it, if not calm, then at least half-elven again. She even managed a nervous smile. Neana pulled herself to a sitting position and discovered that, while she was probably injured, she was still too charged up with battle rage to really feel it.

"This is a magical problem . We need magic to solve it. Can any of your spells stop him?" Sam asked.

"Not unless I can see him," Neana said grimly. "I know a handful of spells that would cut him to pieces, but I don't know any that will reveal the invisible." She sighed, and then admitted. "At least, I've never bothered to memorize any. I have the scrolls back in my cabin on the ship."

"Can you teleport us away?"

"No," Neana said.

"That's not right," Sam said. "I've seen you send people all over the place!"

"Only for very short distances. I could probably send you to the other side of that wall," Neana pointed, "but without knowing what was out there, you might emerge right in the middle of another person. Or a ton of solid rock."

"Oh." Sam snapped her fingers. "I've got it! You could 'port us to the roof! There's nothing up there. You send us up there, and then teleport yourself, and then we could climb down and… tactically retreat."

"No," Neana and Razze said at the same time. This instant agreement startled both of them into silence.

_Whump! _They all ignored it.

Neana went first. "No, I'll be damned if I run from a mere fucking Clanker."

"What she said, but without the implied bigotry," Razze said earnestly. "Tactical retreats are one thing, but I don't run from a fight I know I can win. He started this, but we'll finish it."

Sam looked from determined face to determined face. She sighed. "All right, then. What else can we do?"

"Nothing useful. I can fly for short distances, or channel the raw elements through my hand or sword, or paralyze with a touch. I know a word of power that would stop it in its tracks, but I need to see it to direct the magic." Neana followed this with a curse so foul that Sam and Razze, both veteran sailors, looked shocked. "If I had brought my scroll case, we wouldn't be in this…" Neana stopped.

"What?"

Neana didn't respond. She was too busy pawing at her belt. She cursed her thick, gauntleted fingers as she spilled the contents of a spell pouch onto the floor. Loose soil, feathers, beads of amber, and dried cricket legs went everywhere. Finally, she found it. "Here!"

It was a thin, translucent blue shard of stone, criss-crossed with indigo veins. "Very pretty," Sam said hesitantly, "what is it?"

"A spellshard." Neana grinned nastily. "I forgot I had this. I found it in the cabin of that Valenar Wingship we took in the Thunder Sea. It's a Khyber dragonshard with a spell imprinted in it. If I break the binding on the shard, the spell will cast itself." And as she turned it to catch the dim warehouse light, they could all see flashes of golden script seemingly embedded within the stone's heart.

Razze brightened. "And that will let us see the Warforged?"

_Whump! _

A crate fell off the top stack and shattered to the left of them. They covered their heads as splinters of smoldering wood filled the air.

"No, this is a different spell. Extremely concentrated abjuratory magic. It strips away magical defenses. If I can lay my hands on Brute, this will turn it visible," Neana murmured. "Help me to my feet."

Sam knelt immediately and took her arm. After a moment's hesitation, Razze joined her, and together they dragged Neana to an awkward leaning position. She was a short woman, with a merely average build, but her armor made her very heavy. She breathed loudly and hung on their arms, but eventually she was certain that her knees would support her. "Thank you."

They stared at her.

"What?"

"I'm just not sure that I've ever heard you say that before."

_Whump!_

This time the whole wall of crates creaked alarmingly. Razze darted around the corner to check, and called back "There's hardly anything left up front. I don't think they'll take many more blasts."

"I have a plan," Neana said. She spoke quickly and quietly, and the other two had to draw close to hear her over the crackle of burning kindling. "The invisibility spell cloaks the caster and its possessions, but nothing else: any spell he casts will be completely visible. And I know how firewands work: every time you activate one, it launches a fire-seed that blossoms into the pyroblast. The seed is bright and easily visible. If we watch carefully, we can see it in flight and trace it back to its point of origin."

Sam shook her head. "He'll just displace. If he's smart, he'll move every time he fires. That's how we did it in the Border Sentinels."

"I know. That's where you come in, Sam. The next time he fires, I need you to tag him with an arrow. The arrow won't be invisible, and we can use it to locate him. You'll have to hit Brute after it fires, but before it relocates. Do you think you can do it?"

Sam whistled. "Maybe. How fast does this fireseed move?"

"About as fast as an arrow."

She hesitated. "Yes. I can do it. I think. But I'll never be able to spot the seed, loose, and duck behind cover to dodge the blast. I'm not that fast."

Razze grinned. "This is where I come in, isn't it?"

"Yes. I need you to be a decoy. Draw its fire. You're quicker than me, and I need to be ready with the dispelling shard. Is that—will you do it? I have to be honest: it will be absurdly dangerous. And I have no authority to give you orders."

"I love it. Of course I will." He took off his hat and placed it on Sam's head. "Take care of this for me, will you?" She nodded. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have some attention to draw. It's what I do best."

They took their places. Sam perched precariously on a tall stack of boxes. Razze stretched his legs. Neana drew a cricket's leg from her pouch and, while muttering the ancient arcane syllables, delicately snapped it in half. She felt coils of boundless strength fill the muscles of her legs. She peeked around a corner, until she could see the whole of the warehouse. Not that there was anything to see, except some smoldering patches, charred wood, and an absurdly pristine writing desk.

"Go!" she croaked.

Razze darted out from crate to crate. An expanding ball of flame filled the area where he had just been. Neana missed glimpsing the fireseed, but Sam apparently didn't, because she loosed an arrow. Neana never noticed if Razze was injured, never noticed if Sam successfully displaced. Her eyes were on the arrow, half of which was now sticking out of a patch of empty air. She leapt.

She crushed the spellshard in mid-arc, and felt veins of pure _renunciation_ course through her fingers. She also gripped _Sharneth_ in her other hand, but she didn't need i: she only had to touch the Warforged. The barest physical contact would do it, the brush of magical aura against magical aura, and the spell would discharge.

She landed awkwardly – she could really feel the pain from her burns now, and she suspected that the arrow wounds on her back had re-opened – but didn't miss her stride. She was almost to the arrow when she saw it snap, and the visible half of it clattered to the floor. The bastard had broken it off at the point of impact! She ran, feet pounding, and swung her pulsing, glowing hand at the patch of air where she hoped that Brute was standing.

It wasn't.

She didn't waste her breath on curses, she just kept running. Blind instinct told her to jump and she leapt. The magical force of her leap caused the floor to shudder, but not as much as the explosion that rocked it a heartbeat later. Neana hadn't planned her leap, and so she came to a crashing halt in a crate full of crumbling, dusty tapestries, behind a pile of moth-eaten rugs. She ended up face first in an intricate Altsen patterned weave. She pulled herself out of the rug-pile and slumped behind cover.

I didn't pray, she realized. My god. I forgot to pray to Szorawai. She clapped a hand over her heart, where her pendant dangled.

"Hey," Sam whispered.

Startled, Neana spat out a mouthful of cobwebs. "How did you get over here?"

"I'm quick. And pretty sneaky. Anyway, Razze is hiding behind a hogshead of dwarven spirits – which, now that I think of it, is a terrible place to hide from fireballs – but I don't think he's injured. How are your wounds? Did you lose the spell?"

Neana held up her one glowing hand. "Still there."

Sam nodded in relief. "Good. If you can think of a way to get a message to Razze, I think we can try again."

"Hey!" Someone shouted, and with a sinking feeling they both realized that it was Razze. "Hey, you iron-plated coward! Fight me!"

They peered over the top of the pile together. They saw Razze dart out from behind a barrel of rum, his long legs flashing as he shifted from cover to cover. As they watched, ball of fire enveloped one of the barrels, which creaked alarmingly but thankfully did not explode.

"What's that idiot doing?"

"Drawing fire," Sam said proudly. She touched her fingers to the tip of his hat in salute.

"_Put down the wand, you hunk of cracked granite, and face me. You want to be treated like a man? Then fight like one!"_

"I don't care how immortal he thinks he is, he's going to get killed."

"He's buying us a second chance, dear. We ought to use it," Sam said. And then she kissed her, the briefest brush of lips against her cheek, and was gone.

Right. Neana drew a breath, held it, and released it. _Szorawai, grant me strength. And velocity_.

She heard the sound of bowstring slapping wood, and she leapt. As she cleared the pile of rugs, she saw Sam scrambling for cover. She saw the arrow vibrating in the middle of nothing, and she noticed, with a stab of piercing fondness, that Sam had tied an arms-length of red silk around the tip. Even if Brute broke the fletching off again, the trailing strand of color would give it away.

Neana's fire-frazzled hair brushed the roof of the warehouse as she reached the top of her arc, and she landed right beside the scarf with a force that shivered her bones. She thrust out one arm and felt the stinging pain as her hand slapped stone and steel. Neana was instantly aware of the streaming flows of magic, the hidden currents of fire that coursed through every particle of the physical world. She even felt, for a moment, the impossibly complex web of shining lines that made up the Warforged's person; the strands of raw magic that made it something more than inert stone, wood, and metal. She concentrated until she found the signature of the illusory shroud hiding within the shifting miasma of magic, and, drawing on the raw power in her fist, she severed it.

Brute stood exposed in the center of the warehouse, a slim red wand in one hand, and the shafts of two arrows sticking out of its side. It pointed the finger of its empty hand at its chest_. It's going to turn invisible again,_ she thought. _I don't have another spellshard._ Her hands didn't bother to think, they just swung _Sharneth_ with all the surprising strength in her small body. The shock when she connected was so great that she almost lost her grip. It was like chopping wood with an axe and discovering that the tree had an iron core.

Her blade had buried itself deep within Brute's forearm, nearly severing its hand. She saw purple actinic fire gushing out of the wound and she realized that, for once, she wasn't the source. She had hit the wand embedded within its wrist-sheath and destroyed it, releasing all of its stored magic in gouts of arcane flame. Brute's left arm was a blazing torch with a sword stuck through it.

She watched its featureless face intently. It raised the firewand in its other hand in what she judged to be a threatening manner. "Do you feel pain?" she asked it.

It lowered the wand. "Yes. Not as you do, but I do sense something like personal discomfort when I am damaged."

"Is it pleasant?"

Brute considered. "No. In no way is the sensation pleasant."

"Then. Drop. The. Wand."

The firewand clattered to the floor.

Sam and Razze emerged from hiding, both of them singed but essentially unharmed. They gathered around the defeated Warforged, who had slumped to its knees while clutching the guttering ruin of its right hand.

"Can I see that arm?" Sam asked. She reached out tentatively. "I might be able to fix it."

"There is no need. I am capable of self repair."

"Oh. Well, that's good. I wish I was."

Neana sheathed her falchion. She felt something less than her usual primal joy at this victory. Perhaps her lack of bloodlust was because her foe had no blood to spill. Perhaps it was because she had just wounded something that was, at a certain remove, a Cyran soldier. Perhaps it was because she had lost an enormous quantity of blood and was on the verge of fainting. Regardless, she just wanted this sordid business over with.

"Where's the stash," she asked.

Brute rose to its feet. It let out a long, theatrical, artificial sigh. "It is in the desk. In the third drawer from the bottom, on the right side, there is a lever. Pull it."

They pulled it. A panel slid aside on oiled hinges. There was a heavy wooden chest inside.

"Great!" Sam unspooled a roll of metal lockpicks. "I'll have that open in a—oh, it's unlocked." She flipped off the top. "What's this? Paper?"

"Deeds." Brute collapsed into the heavy leather chair. "And some promissory notes and writs of exchequer. And a few shipping manifests. Why, what did you expect? Bags of gold coins with the portrait of King Galifar on them?"

Razze was leafing through the contents. "What are these, contracts?"

"Yes. I employ several barristers and moneymen. What did you suppose I would possess? I am a businessman. This is, essentially, a business, if an illicit one. I don't hoard gold: I invest it. I buy property and businesses. I lease half the houses in Sharpside, for instance, though few of my tenants suspect the real nature of their landlord. "

"Damn it."

"I did attempt to warn you. Did you really think that you would find a vast stockpile of gold bullion in my office just because this is a thieves' guild?"

"Well, yeah," Sam said sheepishly. "We're more used to pirates, see? Privateers. They go in for small holds full of portable goods. Sometimes gold and silver, sometimes spices and dragonshards."

"This is the land. We do things differently here. Now, will you leave? Please? Before you do me any more irreparable harm?"

"Damn it!" Neana swore again, and kicked the stupid chest. Its loose rolls of paper went flying, as did its cunningly hidden false bottom. With a tinkle not unlike chimes, a stream of platinum coins and tiny, cut gemstones spilled out onto the floor. They made a small but tidy heap.

"Of course," Brute observed, without a trace of embarrassment, "There is also something to be said for keeping a small amount of portable wealth around. In case of emergencies."

They left, with Neana leaning on Razze's shoulder and Sam cheerfully lugging her small but heavy sack. She claimed that she could spiritually commune with large quantities of wealth. She also hesitantly appraised the contents of that little bag at a sum large enough to purchase and outfit a brand new Mother Bear.

"We'll just drop this off with Captain Klein, and have Kiana look at your wounds, then we can meet up with Chandra. And then we're jungle-bound."

But as it happened, Chandrasitari found them first. She met them in a crowded marketplace in downtown Newthrone, with a hulking figure trailing just behind her. At first Neana took it to be an extraordinarily ugly human man, but after a moment's thought she decided that it was a hobgoblin. Perhaps it was quite handsome, by hobgoblin standards. They tended to prize hairy faces and gleaming white fangs. He made a sharp contrast with the tall, delicately featured, incredible beautiful Kalashtar woman at his side.

"This is Victor," Chandra explained. "He is an accredited member of House Tharashk's Finder's Guild. He will be our guide through the jungle."

He knuckled his forehead. "Sir. Ma'am. Ma'am." He looked closer. "Have you all been in a fire?"

Sam just grinned.


	11. Journal Entry 1

Here begins the diary of Neana Sibilinn Tacey, Lieutenant in the Cyran Navy, First Sword of the Cyran Royal Fleet Ship Dire Kitten.

The 15th of Dravago, 994 YK, the blackest depths of inner Q'barra

It is not my general custom to keep a written account of my daily life. Though many arcanists keep a running journal of their weekly practices and experimentations, I never felt inclined to do so. Even as a young girl I did not keep a diary, being too poor at that time to afford ink and paper. I was also afraid that the larger and often brutish girls with whom I was forced to share quarters would take it away from me and read it and in doing so would learn my most private secrets and desires, which they would most certainly have used to taunt me and turn my already squalid life into an endless monotony of shame. That I have begun to consign my life to the page after nearly forty nine years of undocumented living is a testament to my current philosophical mood: a symptom of my current propensity for pondering the metaphysical notions of impermanence, transience, and the ultimate inevitability of my own mortality.

In other words: I have come to believe that we are all going to die in this gods-rotted swamp.

And while I do not fear for my body, which is pledged in service to Queen Dannel of Cyre, or my soul, which is pledged to the Queen of Passions, I have become concerned for the first time in my life with the state of my legacy: to wit, I have begun to believe that it may be desirable to have one. In my pride I wish to leave a mark upon the world, not so much for the world's betterment, but solely that others might be aware that I existed. Upon reflection I have decided that there is a form of immortality in the written word, and as the nights lengthen and the dense, damp topiary ceiling begins to swallow every ounce of the life-giving sunlight, even this poor, mean form of continued existence comes to have a certain appeal. Perhaps some confluence of events will cause this tome to fall into civilized hands one day, proclaiming to the world the eventual fate of our party. Perhaps it will be enshrined in the Museums of Korranberg. More likely, it will end up rotting to pieces, still clutched in my bleached, skeletal fingers.

Lacking any blank pages, I have chosen to record my journal in the margins of Tantselv's _Treatise Concerning the Correcte Pronunciatione of Syllables in Dwarven Rune Magick_. I have chosen this book, rather than either of the other two I brought with me – Adaph's _On Elemental Binding_ and Danaeif Windsong's _The Mystery of the Firelight Murders_ – both because the _Treatise_ has generous and spacious margins, and because I suspect that everything that Tantselv actually knew about Dwarven rune magic would, if written in the form of a tattoo, fit easily on the expanse of skin between his scrotum and his arsehole, with plenty of space left over for appendices and footnotes. Thus, if a hypothetical explorer ever discoverers these last pages, she will perhaps forgive my cramped hand, and will hopefully tolerate having to read the book sideways.

As well, allow me to apologize for the occasional ink stain. I pen this by firelight, using my lap for a writing desk, for we have made our camp in a clearing off the side of the path for tonight. Night sets immediately beneath the jungle canopy, and I already hear the cries of nocturnal beasts as they hunt for something soft and slow-moving to devour. Many nights they select us, to their eventual regret; indeed, tonight's dinner is dried and salted strips of foul-smelling meat from the last creature that braved our fires to attack us. The jungle's denizens seem to consider all two-legged creatures easy prey, an opinion _Sharneth_ is gradually working to correct.

With this preamble out of the way, allow me to briefly express my views on the many and diverse lands that I have crossed ever since departing from the eastern gates of Newthrone, and, indeed, allow my opinion to apply to both the physical realm of Q'barra and all its inhabitants: flora and fauna, sentient and insensate, animal, vegetable, and mineral. To wit:

Fuck this swamp.

Fuck it up the rotting, tumid, dank, black, and bestial anal cavity that it does not actually possess.

I hate this place. I loathe it. From the depths of my admittedly tarnished and pitted soul, with the whole of my physical and spiritual being, I heap contempt upon it. Were the swamp a person, I would murder it. Was it a beast, I would hunt it down, trap it, spit it, and take physical pleasure in roasting it alive. It is as if the continent of Khorvaire possessed a nether region, a vast, tectonic waste-cavity, from which it expelled all the excrement in the world, and someone decided to name it Q'barra.

I hate every part of it. I hate the wetness: the creeping, fetid, miasmic damp that soon ruins any article one might wish to keep dry and causes my clothes to mildew even as I wear them. I hate the heat: sweltering and oven-like, it heaps itself upon our shoulders until the sweat runs in rivulets, increasing the feel of unpleasant wetness and leaving crusty salt deposits in places I dare not mention. I hate the eternal rain: against which, against all physic and reason, the canopy of trees seems not to protect us but instead actually amplifies the falling water, on those rare occasions when it doesn't simply decide to rain sideways and batter us against the trunks of trees. I hate the animals, which are all either carnivorous or poisonous or both, and which, after being heroically dispatched by your humble author, universally taste like mud marinated in offal when grilled over a fire. Most of all, I hate the stench, which beggars mere vocabulary in any attempt to describe it, but can be likened to the nasal equivalent of a _Prismatic Spray_ spell. Should the discoverer of this tome be a magical novice, and thus incapable of understanding the previous simile, I bid them to imagine some type of great, tall silo, as is usually filled to the brim with harvest grain, but is in this instance filled with a combination of feces, sulphur, and mortified flesh. Now imagine the silo caught fire, and then exploded, and is now raining bits of itself across the entire landscape: this is Q'barra.

My opinion is not universal, sadly. The others are, I fear, in the grips of some form of dreadful swamp madness: they profess not to understand my reasons for loathing the environment. Some of them appear to be, against all possible reason, _enjoying themselves_. Clearly this is some form of tropical malaise. It seems clear to me that wasps have crept upon them at night, delicately threaded ovipositors down their ear canals, and laid eggs within their brains. The larval forms of these ear-wasps must have devoured their brain matter in their quest to be hatched, beginning with those sections preoccupied with reason and discernment. Soon comes the gibbering and the madness, followed by paroxysms, and eventually squalid death. Because of my particular fondness for Sam, and the many pleasant evenings we have spent together, I will endeavor to mercifully euthanize her before the disease reaches these final, humiliating stages. I will do the same for Razze, out of a certain dutiful respect. The other two I leave to fend for themselves.

The swamp madness grips Sam the strongest. She is a devoted naturalist, and is delighted with the discovery of each new Inedible Brown Swamp Lizard, and discusses with our guide Victor at great length how it differs from the previously uncovered Green and Brown Inedible Swamp Lizard and, how it may be taxonomically related to the _Venomous_ Inedible Brown Swamp Lizard, which I discovered in my boot one morning. She takes great pains to "make friends" with each new bird or beast, and for her exertions now has five-score bite marks on her fingers and face, and has consumed nearly our whole antivenin supply as a result. She also professes to find the outdoors "exhilarating" and "refreshing" and "a welcome change from being cooped up inside that stuffy ship", and these and other exclamations cause me to commit murder in my heart on a daily basis.

Razze appears indifferent to the wilds from a naturalist point of view, but fairly relishes his role as hunter and alpha male. He consults with Victor nightly on the best methods of protecting our camp from sporadic beast attacks, and spends his days careening through the underbrush, climbing steep rock faces simply to admire the view, attempting to spit dangerous animals with his pinprick of a rapier, and generally exerting himself unnecessarily with a galling lack of fatigue. Indeed, the adversity of this stagnant place seems to have had an invigorating effect on him. I despair to think of what he would be like if plunged into an even less hospitable place, like the Demon Wastes or the heart of Xen'drik; it might be possible to fuel a moderate-sized Cannith Creation Forge on his raw adversarial virility alone.

Hark, I believe I hear a rustling in the trees. If my luck continues as it has, those are the sounds of fearsome jungle predators come to rend my head from my body. A bittersweet prospect, I find: at least the afterlife is not, from all reports, this damp and humid.

If I find consolation in anything, it is that I am not the most miserable person here. Chandrasitari suffers cruelly in this dire terrain. The odd foreign garb she favors wearing is not ideally suited to the jungle environment; her long flowing silks catch on brambles, drag through the mud, and eventually rot even as she wears them. The insects fairly devour her baby-soft flesh, and the mosquitoes'' indisputable preference for attacking her over the rest of us leads me to conclude by simple empirical evidence that Kalashtar blood is especially delicious. As well, Chandra's role as ship's sailing master and navigator has done little to prepare her for the strenuous physical labor of a jungle trek. Exhausted, dirty, and exsanguinated, she despises this situation more than any of us. But whereas I bear my intense loathing with quiet, stoic dignity, Chandra finds herself incapable of internalizing her thoughts, instead preferring to share them with the rest of us in an endless series of bitter asides. I have genuinely offered prayer that a large, low-flying insect would fly into her open cavern of a mouth simply to provide a moment of respite.

As to the last member of our band, the Tharashk guide Victor, I have no opinion whatsoever. He seems to have the knack – a knack shared, unfortunately, by Sam – of speaking much while saying very little. I cannot decide whether the paucity of personal information he has so far revealed is evidence of a secretive past or the natural result of the solitary existence of a wilderness guide. As a guide he is invaluable, for he is more familiar with these accursed lands than I am with an apprentice's cantrip or the hilt of my sword, but as a person I glean little of him. He is a hobgoblin, a race I have learned to respect after numerous battlefield encounters, but he seems to share little of the martial interests of his people. He speaks of the jungle with something approaching reverence, indicating a prolonged bout of the brain madness, but perhaps this is a hint to his religious persuasion: the animistic druidic sects of the Eldeen Reaches speak of the wilderness in a similar manner. As I ponder his trustworthiness, I must note that Sam seems very much taken with him. The two of them traipse about the landscape, naming plants and studying the reptilian inhabitants, and generally enjoying themselves, despite stumbling upon such hideous marshy vagaries as the corrosive Acid-quicksand pits, or the famous Q'barran exploding Shard-trees. Since Sam is by far the more personable half of our little dyad, I bow to her judgment in this respect; since she approves of him, I do as well.

And now, as it appears that the rustling sound grows louder, I shall put down my quill briefly to pick up my sw—

--This entry ends abruptly, and the page it is written on is heavily bloodstained.--


	12. 10: Wherin we learn what the jungle eats

Neana plunged her blade deep into the lizard-man's huge reptilian skull. Its black, featureless eyes bulged. Its legs kicked spasmodically. Its tail thrashed from side to side. She jerked her blade out, tensed, and plunged it in again.

"I think it's dead," Sam said dully.

Neana withdrew_ Sharneth_, tensed, and stabbed. More twitching, more jerking. "That's what you said last night. But it's still moving."

Sam only shrugged. Like Neana, like all of them, she was weary. Bone weary. The lizardfolks' attacks had begun just after dusk, and hadn't ended until a few hours before dawn. Again and again they appeared out of the darkness: huge black shapes clutching spears and crude shields made of animal hide stretched over wooden hoops in their scaly hands. They struck with appalling randomness: sometimes their suicidal charges had come no more than five minutes apart, sometimes once an hour, and once there had been nearly three hours of silence – enough so that all but Victor and Razze had fallen asleep – before more than a dozen of the huge reptile-things had swarmed over their defenses in a last, desperate assault. After the first attack, she and Victor and Razze had cleared the camp site of small trees to make a defensive perimeter of sharpened stakes around the campfire, and the last of the enormous lizard-men was still impaled bodily on one of these. Neana was jabbing at it mindlessly, more for something to do with her hands than out of any real fear that it might still be alive.

"Aye," Victor said. "They do that sometimes: go all twitchy on you. 'Specially the big ones. They're pretty darn stupid, and it takes a long time for that much meat to figure out that it's dead." The big hobgoblin picked the tea kettle up off the fire and poured a little boiling water into a much-stained towel. He set to work wiping the black, crusted reptilian blood off his hands.

With enormous effort, Razze dragged a scaly corpse out of the circle of stakes and threw it onto the already waist-high heap with the rest. "There!" He gasped and wiped away sweat with the back of his hand. "That's number six. Now I'm halfway done." He glanced round. "Why am I the only one on corpse-detail, again?"

Sam rolled up her sleeve. "I'm disqualified on account of skinny changeling arms. See?" She displayed a pale, scrawny limb: Razze eyed her doubtfully, perhaps recalling the ease with which she handled the ninety pound draw of her longbow.

Chandra rolled her eyes. The tall, delicate Kalashtar was reclining beneath the shade of a tree with a long silk shawl draped over her shoulders. "And I defeated you at that ridiculous finger game you insisted on challenging me to."

"Yeah, but you cheated! You used mind-magic on me."

She snorted. "It hardly requires psychic insight to know that you always select Stone. Thus, according to the overly simplistic rules that you yourself explained to me, I need only select Scroll in order to win every time."

Razze sighed. "And you, friend Victor? How did you betray me?"

"Me?" With slow, steady hands the old hobgoblin filled a battered tin cup from the kettle without spilling a drop. He put the cup in Razze's hands. "I brewed the Tal."

Razze gingerly took a sip from the cup, paused, and then drank it down in one long swallow. "Well… okay then."

Neana was examining the pile of dead lizardfolk with mild interest when Razze asked her "What about you, Miss Tacey? You've got a strong back. How about lending me a hand?" Neana started to refuse out of reflexive nastiness, but she couldn't think of a good excuse. She shrugged, leaned _Sharneth_ against the blood-soaked stake, and joined him.

She took a professional interest in the corpses as she dragged them to the heap. In all the chaos of last night, and what with the flickering firelight and the lack of sleep, she hadn't been able to follow what was happening; her whole world had shrunk down to a narrow sliver of reality containing herself, _Sharneth_, and the nearest slavering lizard. But now, as the light of dawn filtered through the choking overhead canopy, she could piece together a sense of events from the scattered remnants of the battle. This corpse, for instance, had three broad-head arrows sticking out of its charred, blackened chest and a gaping neck wound that caused its head to loll from side to side: she vaguely recalled Sam halting its charge with well placed fire arrows long enough for her to come up behind it and chop it down with _Sharneth_. The second corpse had a fist-sized stone lodged in the center of its snout; Victor had surprised her by drawing a sling and a pouch full of smooth river stones out of his pack in the first few seconds of the attack. For the rest of the night he had lobbed stone after stone into darkness beyond the fire's light; hobgoblin eyes were even better than elven eyes when it came to darkness. The sling wasn't an especially deadly weapon, but Victor used it with the smooth and consistent accuracy of long experience. Another lizard-man – or lizard-woman, Neana wasn't sure how you told the difference – appeared unmarked, except for a finger-sized hole that passed cleanly through its skull where Razze had intercepted its charge with his rapier. And a fourth corpse…

Neana and Razze both paused before picking up this lizard-man and stared at it thoughtfully. This particular reptile gave every appearance of having very carefully and deliberately thrown itself upon its own spear. She didn't remember that happening, but Neana couldn't imagine any other way that it could have become impaled like that. It was still slumped upright, suicidally gripping the shaft in both hands as if to guide it home. On cue both half-elves turned, as if on oiled pivots, to stare at Chandra. She returned their stares calmly, her violet eyes glittering above the shawl. Their gazes slid back to the corpse.

"Mind Magic?" Razze wondered.

"She calls it psionics," Neana said, not without a certain sense of unease. Neana was a wizard of more than passing skill, and _she_ couldn't do that sort of thing.

"Wow. That's some heavy mojo."

"I talked about it with her once. She says that she's harnessed the power of her own mind. She says that all minds are secretly linked, through the secret world of dreams. She says that anyone could do it if they weren't blinded by their own inhibitions." Neana shrugged. "She could be right."

A thought appeared to strike Razze. "She can't… she can't read my mind, can she? She doesn't know what I'm thinking, right?"

"I don't know." She considered. "There are arcane spells that can detect surface thoughts. I'd be surprised if a purely mental art couldn't accomplish at least that much, if not more."

"What about when she's not there?" As far as Neana could tell, Razze wasn't exactly fearful, because his personal mix of youth and elven arrogance didn't seem to allow for actual fear, but he was a bit anxious. A trifle perturbed. Something in particular was exerting a definite weight upon his mind. "What about when I'm… when she's farther away. Or when she can't see me. She can't see my thoughts then, can she?"

"No," Neana said firmly. "Definitely not."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because if she could see what was in your head when you were touching yourself, she would have made you slit your own throat weeks ago."

"Har har," he said.

Neana ducked her head to hide a smile. _And that goes for Sam and me as well_, she thought, as she stooped to pick up the corpse. If Chandra had an inkling of what went on in the cabin next door, she would have been appalled: Sam was, in _every _way, an extremely imaginative impersonator. _We should all be thankful for the mercy of locked doors._

"I don't get it," Sam said, oblivious to the carrion-pile forming behind her. "I thought we had a deal with the Lizardfolk. A House Tharashk certificate of safe passage. I mean, I saw it: it looked pretty official. Wax seal, little gilt curlicues on the corners, arcane watermarks: the total package. That's pretty tough to forge, even with a really good counterfeiter's kit. So if it's real – and it better be, since we paid for it – why isn't it working?"

Victor smiled phlegmatically. His fangs glinted, but not in a disturbing way. "You truly learned nothing of the wilds before you set out, did you?"

"I asked around," Sam said defensively. "But no one wanted to talk about it. The people of Newthrone act like the jungle outside their walls didn't exist."

"She speaks truth." Chandra's voice caught them both by surprise. Ever since they had left Newthrone, she hardly ever spoke except to argue or complain. "I felt the mood of the city. It huddled in upon itself like a miser. I have not seen a land so inwardly focused since I departed Rierdra."

"Aye," Victor agreed. "They distrust the jungle, and with good reason." He sat down with his hands on his knees. "The jungle would devour them whole, if it had its way. It doesn't give a damn about their notions of New Galifar, or liberty, or the trappings of civilization. It would love to eat them alive, and lash their walls with vines, and reduce the cities to rubble. Shall I tell you of the jungle?"

They nodded. Even Neana and Razze paused in mid-drag in order to listen.

"To understand Q'barra, you have to go very far back into the past. A million years ago, this place was a battlefield. The Children of Khyber – the demons – and the Children of Syberris – the Dragons – were locked in constant warfare, and for some dang reason they liked to get together and slaughter one another right here. The ground you're standing on is soaked in centuries of fiendish and draconic blood. Now, demons are immortal, or something close to it, so when the dragons finally won the war, instead of killing their opponents they ended up sealing the demon legions deep beneath the earth. And I guess they weren't too sure that their wards would hold, because they also appointed guardian Wyrms to sit in the jungle and keep their nostrils open for the smallest hint of brimstone. That's why more dragons have made their homes in Q'barra than anywhere outside the Dragonlands."

"Dragon guardians?" Neana interrupted. Her wizardly teachers at the Academy Arcanix went mad searching for information about the actions of Dragons, and they'd never mentioned this. "You know this for a fact?"

Victor shrugged. "It's what the Lizardfolk believe. They claim to be descended from some of these ancient guardians – before you ask, no, they don't say how – and they revere and worship them. In fact, they think that the gods are really just another bigger and more powerful kind of dragon. The Cold Sun tribes call the Devourer by the name Garys, or Garonoxysis, and say that she's a huge red dragon the size of a mountain range, and the progenitor of the Lizardfolk race. I'm telling this so that you understand that the Lizardfolk don't just live here: they claim to own this land by right of conquest. They feel nothing but contempt for the other races, who can't claim descent from anything as lofty as a dragon. They especially hate the humans who established settlements in Q'barra without asking their leave. There are factions within the Lizardfolk who would rise up and attempt to wipe Newthrone off the map if given the slightest provocation. And they might be able to: they don't have steel weapons or stone walls, but there are more lizards than humans, and they're bigger, and stronger, and they have the jungle is on their side."

"So what you're saying is, our certificate of safe passage isn't worth the paper it's printed on." Sam said flatly.

"Relax, child," Victor said. "I'm getting there." He took another kettle from next to the fire, opened the lid, and sprinkled in a pinch of herbs. "As I said, there are factions among the Lizardfolk. More than factions, there are different species. Those, for instance," he pointed at the corpse slung between Neana and Razze's arms, "are Blackscales. They're the giants of the lizard races: twice the size of their smaller cousins. You usually find them at the top of the social heap, bullying smaller, weaker Lizardfolk. They're not good for much more than fighting: they don't build, or farm, so they prefer to make their homes in old abandoned ruins. I'm surprised to see them this far north. They hate the Galifaran 

settlers worse than any of the others, but they live in the very heart of the jungle, so far from civilized areas that they rarely come into contact with humans. Besides that, they're fairly rare: the Greenscales outnumber them ten to one. Greenscales are what you probably think of when you hear the word Lizardfolk. They're smaller than the Blackscales, and a bit smarter, and more civilized. They even have their own city: Ka'rhashashan, where we're headed."

"But the Blackscales boss them around?"

"Only in Blackscale territory. Further north, the Greenscales band together and drive them out. The Greenscales have banded together into a federation of civilized clans. They call themselves the Cold Sun Tribes. The Cold Sun Greenscales are ambivalent towards the settlers: they don't like them much, and they figure that the jungle will drive them away eventually, but as long as the Galifarans are here, they're open to negotiation. They're the ones who issued your certificate: they trade safe passage rights for steel spearheads and metal armor. As long as you have that certificate, and me with you, no Cold Sun Lizardfolk will raise a hand against you."

"And yet," Chandra said, "Why do I not feel safe?"

"Why, because we were attacked by a few Blackscales?" The old hobgoblin poured a stream of black liquid from the kettle into a tin cup. He smelled the aroma with a content sigh. "I doubt you'll see any more of them. I've made this trek two dozen times, and this is only the second time I've been attacked. They travel through Greenscale territory sometimes, but never in large numbers. And the Greenscales won't hurt you, you can be sure of that."

"Because of this?" Sam had dug the certificate of safe passage out of her backpack and was examining the fine print.

"I suppose," Victor conceded. "But mostly because of me."

"Oh yeah?"

"The certificate was issued by House Tharashk. Tharashk's word is good as far as that goes, but the paper is a human device. Lizardfolk don't trust things that are written down on anything more fragile than a stone obelisk. But they trust me. They know me. They put their mark on me. As long as you're with me, you're safe."

"Their mark?"

Instead of answering, Victor's hands went to the front of his leather jerkin. He undid the strings and slipped it over his head. Neana had thought he was old: she wasn't very clear about how non-half-elves aged, but his orange skin was dull and spotted, and the course dark hair that lined the sides of his face was peppered with white. Now she was sure of it. The thick, matted hair on his chest was dotted with patches of greying bristles. But that wasn't what he had wanted to show them.

"My Gods," Sam murmured.

"Now that's what I call a tattoo," Razze said.

But they weren't tattoos, Neana saw at once. Victor's chest, arms, and back were covered with mottled whorls of color, but they weren't tattoos; they were scars. Bright blue scars, in curves and overlapping spirals that bor more than a passing resemblance to the Draconic script. Someone had carved the patterns directly into his flesh with what looked like a very dull knife, and the rough scar tissue was tinted the same hue as frostbitten flesh.

"You can't tattoo scales," Victor explained. "So the Cold Sun's mark their tribal affiliation through ritual mutilation. Then, when the wound is still bleeding, they grind up dragon shards from the pits around Ka'rhashashan and rub it into the wound. On a lizard-man, when it heals, the powdered dragonshards make the scales turn blue. On me, it just made blue scars."

"You let them do that to you?"

"It was an honor. One mark for every one of the twenty-four Cold Sun Tribes. Less than a dozen Sharak – that's what they call outsiders – have been marked in this way. Ten of them are House Tharashk guides. We're the only ones that can safely conduct expeditions through the jungle. If you had tried to venture to your ruins unaccompanied, you would have disappeared without a trace. The Jungle would have swallowed you whole. The Lizardfolk do not tolerate trespassers." He put his jerkin back on and went back to sipping his tea.

"Wow," Sam said. "So, just to be clear: Blackscale bad, Greenscale good? Anything else we should be looking out for?"

He considered. "There is another breed of lizardfolk. The Poison Dusks clan. They are small, and stealthy. I doubt that you'll ever see any."

"Poison Dusk. Check. Hey, can I have some Tal?"

He handed her a cup. Neana took one as well. The potent Halfling drink was hot and bitter, and yet you couldn't stop drinking it once you started. She felt it revive her: a cup of Tal was as good as a night's rest, as the proverb said.

She helped Razze drag the rest of the huge corpses to the pile they had made, well downwind from the clearing. Each weighed more than a quarter of a ton. When they had them piled up, Sam asked, "Are we just going to leave them there?"

"I'm not digging a grave," Neana answered. "I'm exhausted enough as it is. When we leave, we can throw the stakes on the pile and I'll set fire to it with magic. It'll make for a decent pyre."

"Are you sure that won't start a forest fire?" Sam asked.

"We should be so lucky," Neana said sourly. "This whole place is too damp to burn." She looked down at her hands, now crusted with black blood, and her bloodstained armor, and her filth-caked feet. "I 

need to wash up," she announced. "If I don't get clean sometime soon, I'm going to die of rampant unhygienicality. I'm going to go find some water that isn't filled with lizard-crap."

"Don't wander too far," Victor said mildly. "The jungle –"

"Yeah, yeah: swallow me whole. I know how to take care of myself," she replied, before stomping off. Truth to tell, she was hoping that something out there would be stupid enough to attack her.


	13. 11: Wherin there is mushy stuff

Neana was disappointed: nothing tried to kill her.

Maybe it was the rattle of her armor, or the heavy clomp-clomping of her boots, or the way she kicked through obstacles rather than walking around them, but she didn't see a living thing until she found the clearing. An ancient tree had fallen, a tree as big around as a house, and nothing had yet grown to fill the gap. Clear sunlight came in through the hole in the canopy rood, and bathed the area in golden light. Water burbled up from a cleft in the rocks and filled a shallow pool that was more like a puddle. Flowers of every description grew around the pool in riotous splendor, taking advantage of the free sun. They lent the clearing a wealth of color: bloody crimson, ocean blue, golden yellow, burnished orange. After the constant dull green and murky brown of the jungle, Neana felt the sight fill a need she hadn't known she had. There were butterflies too, in colors to make even the flowers envious, and a species of small, pale silvery frogs splashing in the spring.

It was really quite lovely.

Neana went to the spring, cupped a handful of water, and threw it into her face. It was pleasantly cool. She used the water to wet her hair and clean her face. She washed her hands. She drank it down by the mouthful. Then she sat down on a broken tree root.

Despite herself, despite the jungle, despite her exhaustion, Neana was actually feeling good. She shrugged off her baldric and leaned Sharneth against the root. She reached up, undid the straps of her armor, pried off her back-plate. With a relieved sigh she removed the weight of her breastplate. And in her case, it was definitely a _breast_plate. Some female warriors liked to sport ridiculously over-endowed breastplates, in the same way that some men liked to have stylized, rippling muscles hammered into their cuirasses, but Neana thought that was all a little much: just another form overcompensation. What she did have was some subtle curvature, _here_ and _here_, in reflection of her own modest attributes. She liked her enemies to know, when she was done with them, that their asses had been well and squarely kicked by a girl.

"That feels better. Much better."

From her belt she produced a cloth and a vial of fine beeswax and, with an effort, she began to polish her armor. After a while, she found that she had started to hum a little song.

Inch by inch, Neana began the long process of letting herself relax, never realizing that she was being watched by unseen eyes.

This, then, is Neana Tacey, when the world isn't looking. It's a site few ever see: a small, compact woman with an assertive posture, possessing some of the slenderness of an elf but none of their inborn grace. Despite her best efforts, she cannot conceal the duality of her heritage; despite letting her hair grow to a militarily inappropriate shoulder length, it doesn't quite hides the tips of her pointed ears, and despite spending years aboard the naked deck of a ship, her skin is still pale. The best she's been able to do is a smattering of freckles. With the weight of her armor gone, the habitual scowl also slipped from her face, and it leaves her looking years younger. In the right light, and with a hood on, she could have 

passed for a human teen if it weren't for her eyes. Her eyes have always been her most striking feature. They're a cold, icy, cerulean blue: they look distant and haunted when she isn't angry, and they burn with icy fire when she is. She thinks of them as her Wizard's Eyes. She looks as if she has seen things mortals were not meant to see, and people, upon meeting her for the first time, are often given the uneasy impression that she is staring at a point just inside their own heads.

Just now, the watching eyes thought that they make her look like a wistful child.

"Look at you," Sam said from behind her. "Unarmed and unarmored. Why, you're practically naked."

Neana looked down at herself. She was still wearing a heavy wool gambeson over her traveling clothes, along with a plated belt, a skirt of chainmail, and her greaves and boots. "Well you know me," she replied sarcastically. "Always a nudist."

"I followed you." The changeling explained unnecessarily as she picked her way down the path to the water. "Not because I was afraid that you'd be attacked, because I know you can handle yourself. I just got to thinking, and I thought: what if you fell in quicksand or something? You probably don't even know what quicksand looks like. And with all that armor on, you'd sink right to the bottom. So I followed. For safety's sake."

To hide a smile, Neana bent over her breastplate and put some extra elbow grease into her polishing. "As you can see, there was no quicksand."

"Yeah, I figured that." She took a seat next to Neana on the length of gnarled root. "Say, this place is nice. Real pretty."

"I have excellent taste in clearings."

Sam sat next to her, and began unloading her own burdens. The changeling sat her bow and quiver aside, shrugged off her thin woolen sailor's waistcoat, and pulled off her boots. She dipped a pale grey foot in the spring water. "Oh, that feels wonderful." She proceeded to soak her feet.

Time passed. A bird, or possibly some kind of winged lizard, alighted on a distant tree and trilled a mating call. Sam put an arm around Neana's shoulders. Neana tensed, then relaxed. There was no one around to see. Instead, she said "Do you know, I would commit murder for a hot bath right now. Unlawful, premeditated murder."

Sam considered this. She examined the ruffled lace cuffs of her shirt. They were soiled and travel-stained. "I'd kill for a decent laundress and a pound of good lye soap."

"Or a glass of chilled wine."

"A hot meal of anything except fried lizard."

"How about a change of smallclothes?" Neana said, with no little feeling. She ceased polishing her breastplate and rested her head against Sam's shoulder. It felt good: she knew that if she let herself relax much more, she'd fall asleep sitting up.

"Or a pillow to sleep on, instead of my boots wrapped in a blanket."

"And a gag to stop Chandra's snoring. I swear, if I have to share a tent with her much longer…"

"Definitely," Sam agreed. "Most of all, I think I'd kill to get a room to ourselves again. A real room, with furniture that isn't bolted to the wall, and a door with a lock. And a bed." She nuzzled Neana's neck. "A real bed, instead of a bunk, with room enough for two. And maybe a feather mattress and silk sheets…" The changeling's hand, from its position on Neana's knee, began to slide northwards.

"Sam," Neana said sternly, "Don't start anything you don't have time to finish. The others will come and look for us if we're gone too long."

"Okay," Sam relented. She was perfectly happy to just share an embrace for hours on end.

Which is what they did for the next quarter of an hour. Neana cleaned and waxed her back-plate as well, and did the best she could with her chain skirt and greaves. Eventually she broke the embrace, got up, and spread her armor on the ground in a circle. From her belt she took out a small blue crystal and slotted it into a socket on her breastplate. She began to trace symbols with her finger in the dirt.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked.

"I'm casting the spell that calls my armor to me. I have to do it once a day, or the spell won't work." The pedantic precision which had been drilled into her at the magical academy made her add, "Actually, it's not really a spell, it's a ritual to activate the ingrained magical trigger of the spell-matrix bound into the armor at its creation. Which amounts to the same thing."

"Oh." Sam said, without any hint of understanding. Slowly, tension filled her limbs. She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. "Will it interrupt anything if we talk while you do it?"

"No."

"Good. Um. Because I think we need to talk. About the future."

Uh oh. "What about the future?"

Sam picked at her sleeves. "Um. About the future of us, as a couple. About if we have one."

Uh oh. More roughly than she intended, Neana said, "Then talk."

Sam winced. "I mean, where do you see this going? I don't mean just me, I mean this whole situation. Even if we make it to Khara… Kha'rash… Lizard-city, and the lizardfolk point us to the ruins, and we get there alive, and investigate, and we meet back up with the Mother Bear, and we make it all the way to Thronehold… If we manage to do all of that, what happens afterward?"

"I don't know," Neana said dully. "I suppose we'll get more orders."

"Orders to do what?" Sam clenched and unclenched her hands in exasperation. "Do you see what I'm getting at? The war is over. Everyone knows it, but no one wants to say it. Well, I'm saying it: it's over. There's no one left to fight, and not enough left to fight with. I mean, at what point is it okay to just acknowledge that we've lost?"

"When the Admiral surrenders."

Sam sighed. "I think she will. I think she has to. I don't see another way out. But even if she doesn't, we really need to examine our options. Even the naval code makes provisions for abandoning a sinking ship."

Neana said nothing.

"If she does surrender, that's it for the Mother Bear. And the Dire Kitten too, I guess. I know that Captain Klein can't afford to pay a warship's crew by himself. Without a nation's backing, he'll have to sell it out of service or turn to piracy. And where does that leave us?"

Neana said nothing.

"We'd find work, I know. We've got useful skills. Killing and stealing are always useful skills. And I could survive nearly anywhere: I can always go back to conning, or singing in taverns again. And you're a warrior _and _a wizard; there's not many that can do what you do. Morgrave, the Wayfinders, theTwelve: there are always organizations looking for that kind of expertise. And if nothing else presents itself… you could always join House Deneith."

That shocked her. "Become a mercenary?" Neana's mouth twisted.

"It isn't bad work," Sam said defensively. "It's less dangerous than being a sailor. And you wouldn't even have to fight: I know they hire on retired soldiers to train their recruits. And it's an ancient and honorable tradition. They have a code: so long as they get paid, they always keep their word."

"But they're _mercenaries_." Neana said in the same tone that she would say "But they're covered in _feces_."

Sam backpedaled. "Well… maybe not Deneith. But you'd have to find work somewhere. You can't join another nation's army – they've all heard of you," she added darkly. "I suppose that you could become a city guard, but I don't think you'd like that. And, of course, you could always get work as a bodyguard, or as an enforcer for a Thieves' Guild…"

Neana said nothing.

"Well, whatever. You can decide later: it'll be weeks before we meet back up with the ships. Anyway, the thing is, the reason I wanted to talk about it is… Whatever you decide to do, I want to do it with you." Sam concluded in a rush. "Wherever you go, I'll follow, if you'll let me. If you want to stay in the 

navy, I'll go with you, to the bitter end. To my very last breath. But if you want to leave… I think we could try to make a life together." By this point Neana had stopped even pretending to cast her spell, and she was standing over her armor with her back to Sam. She felt the changeling's hand on her shoulders. "I have some money set aside, and my father has several small sums tucked away here and there: not a lot, but enough to seed a decent life. We could buy a house. I could raise horses. We could do all those things we can't do now because we have to hide things: the complete life experience. Hearth, home, community, children—"

"Children?!" Neana jerked.

"Well, maybe not children," Sam amended. "But you know what I mean. What do you think about it all? Think about it: what do you want? Does any of that sound good to you?" Sam asked, with the brittle smile of one who has set their heart in someone else's hands.

Neana didn't have the words. She wasn't a poet: she couldn't express herself easily. She usually only spoke in short, declarative sentences. But what she would have said, if she had the words, was this: _Don't try and fit me into your fantasy, Sam. I don't fit well into other people's futures. I've never had a future._

Neana was aware that, by most standards, she wasn't a good person. By most standards she was, in fact, a very bad person. She was bloodthirsty: she preferred violent solutions to nonviolent ones. She actively sought out the deaths of others. She hurt people that didn't necessarily need hurting. She took a nearly orgasmic pleasure in killing elves. And she was often nasty and short-tempered, even to the few people she liked. But she hadn't always been this way. In the short time her parents had cared for her, they had done their best to raise her to be a Good Girl. They had been good, simple people, and some of their values still stayed with her, despite her brutal apotheosis. That's why she had joined the Navy.

When that Valenar scout had slit her throat all those years ago, it transformed her. It rewrote her soul, scouring new and bloody exigencies onto to fabric of her being. It put a never-ending fount of rage in the pit of her belly, a flow borne of her own shame and guilt. She felt guilt for having survived, and shame over not having done anything to prevent their deaths: she knew, logically, that these were ridiculous emotions, but that took away none of their sting. Because of this shame, the anger was always with her: it flowed constantly forth from the core of her being. She understood, in a cool and distant way, that she was no longer quite sane. Sane people didn't wake themselves up at night grinding their teeth in impotent rage. She worshipped the Fury because of this: she gave herself freely to the Queen of Passion not out of any personal choice, but in the same way that an iron nail seeks a lodestone. In another time, and under different circumstances, she would have become a Berserker: a frothing lunatic destroyer, as dangerous to her own side as to the enemy. But instead she had been raised by loving parents in a civilized society, and that meant that in her heart of hearts she didn't want to be thought of as a Bad Girl.

She had learned to manage the rage as best she could. She had poured it into activity: first into mastering the sword and then, when this grew perilously easy, into the arcane arts. The rage drove her, 

like water poured on a millhouse wheel, to excel at all her aims. Thus she had joined the Navy – she chose the Navy because it was more dangerous than the Army, and more likely to bring her into violent opposition – to legitimize her own base inclinations. If she couldn't make herself stop wanting to hurt people, at least her superiors could make sure that she only hurt the right people, at the right times. Because she feared that she couldn't control herself, she put herself into a position to be controlled by others.

And it had _worked_. The navy hadn't just kept her alive; it had made her an officer. She might be a bad person in some people's opinions, but in others, she was a hero. The same personal drive that led her to forge herself into a more perfect killer also made battles shorter and prevented her people from incurring casualties. She honed her skill in order to butcher Valenar, but she also used it to safeguard her marines. Many Cyrans now lived who would have died if not for her. Wives had husbands come home because of her. There were children who had mothers because of her actions, who grew up in a loving home instead of being raised in orphanages like her. She rarely thought about this, but when she did, it pleased her. It was good to do good deeds, even accidentally.

She knew that she would be a danger, if left to her own devices. It had been like that before, when she had been a teenager. With no outlets, the anger would fill her, and she would start taking stupid, violent risks. She'd get in fights. She'd be abusive to her friends. People would get hurt. She needed the Navy's strict order to help her cling to sanity. She liked Sam, liked her with as much kind emotion as she had felt for anyone since her parents died, but the Changeling's loving heart and well-meaning optimism were no match for the raging flood in Neana's gut. It was a sad fact to face, but she needed the ordered life of the Navy more than she needed Sam.

Neana wanted to say all of these things, but she couldn't find the right words. She knew that however she trip to phrase it, Sam would take it as a personal failing. The silence between them stretched dreadfully.

_Oh Goddess_, Neana thought. _What I wouldn't give for a handy Lizardfolk attack right now._

The Lizardfolk attacked.

The air was suddenly filled with crude wooden spears, each as thick as a human arm. Neana had less than a second to react: instinctively she raised her breastplate to protect her face. The mithral plate caught a spearhead and the force of the blow bore her to the ground. When she stood up again she saw them: four huge, black shapes charging in from the tree line. She assessed the situation: her armor lay around her in pieces, Sharneth lay several steps away, Sam stood behind her with a quiver at hand but her bow unfortunately unstrung. A dagger appeared in each of Sam's hands.

Neana grinned. This was much easier than talking about feelings. _They probably think we're unarmed_, she thought. _They really are stupid._

And then they were on her. She lunged for _Sharneth_, but a huge scaly hand grabbed arm. She turned on it, and in the naked sunshine she fully realized the size of the thing for the first time. Neana was 

short, barely five feet tall, and this Blackscale was at least twice her height and five times her mass. It lifted her effortlessly, bringing her face level with its fanged mouth. Foul breath washed over her as its jaws gaped wide. Neana calmly placed her palm on its scaly chest. In her head, she imagined herself making a fist with her fingers, as if the Blackscale's flesh was insubstantial, as if she could carve grooves in its scales with her fingertips. Dark, necrotic power flowed down her arm and into her hand, and then through the Blackscale's body. She felt its massive heart slow… slow… and stop. As it died, the magical backlash hit her, and she dropped to the ground next to its desiccated corpse, nearly pulsing with stolen life.

Sam was being menaced by two burly lizard-men. Both their chests were liberally studded with her small, slim throwing knives, but they seemed to be ignoring this as the closed on her. Neana waved a hand, and scoured their flanks with lines of searing flame. Before she could see if this dropped either of them, the fourth lizard clubbed her in the head.

She fell in a crumpled heap. Her vision became so blurred that, for a moment, she thought she had gone blind. Her thoughts lurched, and she struggled away from unconsciousness. No matter who you are, no matter what you are, a blow to the head gives pause. Pain brought her back, as the Blackscale chomped down on her unarmored leg with mouth full if slavering needle teeth. She kicked it, pulled free, and scooted backwards on her hands and ass to get away from its gnashing jaws. The Blackscale had a club in its other hand, a club made by the simple expedient of uprooting small tree, but it discarded its weapon in its desire to eat her alive. Her back hit the gnarled tree-root. Her hand found her discarded baldric.

Before she could unsheathe her sword, the Blackscale picked her up and pulled her to it. It buried her in a massive bear hug, pressing her face deep into its scaly hide. It stank of swamp and rot and mud and decay. She wanted to puke. She kicked it right between the legs, twice, as hard as she could, but it gave no reaction. Maybe lizardfolk didn't keep them there. Just as she was starting to black out from lack of air, she felt the tension ease. The huge creature dropped her on the ground and howled.

Sam was on its shoulders, her legs wrapped around its neck, trying desperately to shove a slim stiletto into its ear-hole. The Blackscale was clawing and biting at her, trying to gain purchase on a target it couldn't see. Behind it she saw the other two Blackscales lying on the ground: one with a dagger in its eye, one with a scorched hole where its throat had been.

Neana unsheathed _Sharneth_. "Sam!" she shouted. "Jump!"

Sam leapt free. The Blackscale was crouched directly over her: Neana jabbed straight upwards. _Sharneth_, whose magical watered-steel blade parted flesh and bone as easily as paper, went cleanly through. Warm, unspeakable wetness hit Neana's face as she slit the lizard-man open. Just to make sure, she poured arcane lightning through her blade and into its flesh, blasting its innards to pulp. The lifeless Blackscale slumped, fell, and collapsed on top of her.

Sam managed to pull her out from under it before she suffocated.

Neana choked and gasped. She was covered in lizard blood and offal. She stank of mud and filth. She accepted Sam's hand when Sam pulled her to her feet, and she leaned against the changeling's shoulder until she could draw breath without wheezing, but then she said, "This is me, Sam. This is what I do." She stumbled to the pool, dipped her breastplate into the water, and used it like a bucket to douse her head and body, to clear the blood from her face. "It's all I know how to do. I can't see myself reconciling this," she waved a hand, taking in the corpses, the violence, and her sword, "with a happy home in the country."

"Oh," Sam said.

"I'm going to stick with the Admiral until the last ship goes down. That's what I've done for twenty years; it's the only thing I still know how to do. If you want to see me through it, then… good." She tried to give a wan smile, but she feared it made her look grotesque. "I like you, Sam. I'd like it if you'd stay with me. But if you need to leave, I understand. And if it's not your war anymore… I understand that too." Neana shrugged. "I know it's not a very good offer. But it's all I can make."

"Oh," Sam said.

The awkward silence stretched out for several minutes, while they both washed away as much of the battle's residue as they could. Neana re-cast her spell, then carefully stowed her armor in a knapsack, where it could be retrieved at an instant with a magical command.

When they were ready to leave, Sam finally spoke. "I, um, I got you this in Newthrone." She produced a small leather bag. "Actually, I kind of stole it. It was in the Brute's horde, and as soon as I saw it, I thought of you. Um. Because it matches your eyes." She pressed it into Neana's hands. Her face was unreadable.

Neana opened the bag. What spilled into her hand looked, at first, like a tangle of loose silver thread. When she spread it out, she could see that it was a bracelet, made of several braided strands of ethereally thin silver wire, and strung along its length with hundreds of microscopic blue gemstones, each barely larger than a grain of sand. The gemstones were, as Sam promised, the same vibrant blue as Neana's eyes.

"It's beautiful," Neana said inadequately.

Sam waved this away, not meeting Neana's eyes. "It's nothing. Just a thing I found. Um. I'm glad you like it." Her cheeks were wet. Her skin seemed to flicker, as if she were having trouble keeping herself the same size, shape, and color. In a rush, she added, "I'm with you. Whatever you decide to do. Even to the last… to… I'm with you." And then she was gone, leaping up the path out of the clearing like a gazelle, not able to bear meeting her lover's gaze.

Neana stared at her bracelet. She was only dimly aware of what it meant to the changeling. "Damn it, Sam." She had meant everything she said. She wasn't capable of giving what Sam wanted from her. It was best that they both confronted that. But still… "Damn it Sam." It was like severing her own heart string. Some things you just couldn't do.

"Halt!" Neana shouted, and give it that extra snap of arcane will that made it something more than just a word. She heard Sam's progress through the jungle come to an abrupt stop. Neana found her leaning nonchalantly against a tree, as if she had every intention of stopping and waiting, as if her feet weren't bound to the ground with invisible chains. She looked in every direction but at the half-elf.

Neana held up the bracelet. "Do you know what this is?"

"No," Sam said shortly. And then: "I had hoped they were sapphires. Sapphires are worth more."

"They're dragonshards. Fine, polished chips of a Khyber dragonshard."

"Really?" Sam looked up, interested in spite of herself.

"Normally Khyber shards are indigo or dark blue-black, but this one was pared down so fine that the light passing through it makes it appear cerulean. And then they were set in a bracelet. That makes this something more than jewelry: it's magical." Neana forced her voice to be as kind as she could make it. Because her throat was naturally raspy and rough, this meant that she had to whisper.

Sam drew closer, to make sure she heard correctly. "Magic?"

"It's a focus charm. It's used… well, it has many small uses, but one of them is to train apprentice mages. Khyber shards are binding gems: they naturally absorb magic. When spells are cast near a focus charm, it absorbs some of the ambient magical energy and stores it. Then it gently releases the energy as a magical glow. When an apprentice wearing a focus charm attempts to cast a difficult spell, they know that they are getting closer to succeeding by watching the light given off by the charm grow brighter and brighter. I had a charm, a long, long time ago," Neana added, "but it was nowhere near this fine. This one must have been made for a noble, or a Dragonmark heiress. Would you like to see it work?"

"Yes."

Neana concentrated. She expended the simplest magical enchantment she knew, a weak illusion spell. She felt the power radiate along her fingers and she felt how, just before the spell was completed, its energies were sucked into the bracelet. The gemstones on her wrist flickered, and flared, and burst forth in lambent blue fire the color of a morning sky, the color of her eyes. Her wrist became wreathed in thin streams of blue fire. She held it cupped like water in the palm of her hand, let it dribble like rain through her fingers. Small sparks of cool magical fire cascaded to the ground, where they winked out. Even Neana, jaded connoisseur of arcane exploits, was enchanted by the sight.

Sam's eyes were huge, white, and opalescent. "It's beautiful," she said, her voice as simple as a child's.

"It is. I treasure it," Neana said. "Thank you." She placed both her hands on Sam's shoulders. With an effort she stood, on tiptoe, and raised herself level with the changeling's mouth. Her kiss was not remotely chaste, and when it was over, Sam reached up involuntarily to touch her fingers to her lips.

They said nothing. What was there to say?

Neana felt as if the balance of her heart had shifted somewhat. She felt… better. Just better. Nothing was settled, nothing was accomplished, but nevertheless, the bracelet had established some kind of tenuous equilibrium between the triangle of Sam, herself, and her hate. Things could stay as they were, for now. It was a sign of her new acceptance that, when Sam's hand found hers on their walk back to camp, Neana accepted it.

And so they walked, hand-in-hand through the jungle, right up to the point where Neana fell in the quicksand.


	14. Journal Entry 2

The 17th of Dravago, 994 YK, somewhere in Q'barra.

Weather: continues miserable.

Mood: sullen, irritable, horny. The latter may explain the former.

Beyond a few passing remarks, I have not spoken to Sam since the incident two days ago. I am not sure what there is left to say. Words are not my forte, as this journal surely makes clear. If she is content with the silence, I am also content to let it lie. And since I am so very rarely content with anything, this is assuredly a good sign.

The bracelet really is strikingly beautiful. I can't remember the last piece of jewelry I owned, that wasn't a religious pendant. I feel absurdly grateful for the gift, far in excess of what I ought to feel for a piece of stolen jewelry. Perhaps I've received so few tokens of kindness over the years – largely my own fault, I know – that this one affects me more than I would expect.

Hmmm….

And the damnable thing is that I can't express my gratitude, either in words, or in deeds. I so rarely feel charitable that it seems a shame not to act on it, and I know exactly the type of coin that Sam likes to be repaid in. Ours was always a very _physical_ relationship; it's the one thing we don't ever seem to argue about, and the only type of love I seem to be good at. If I had the time, and the privacy, and a bottle of sweet Aundairan white, I'd spend a few hours trying to articulate my appreciation in no uncertain terms.

But I can't. Bloody kalashtar. Chandrasitari pitches her bedroll right between us. Indeed, I think that her presence in our tent is the true source of my ill feeling towards her; in fact, reading back over this journal, it seems to me that her behavior has not been nearly as shrewish as I have depicted. Not that she is in any way a reasonable being, but she's less of a bitch than I let on. I have been unkind. I dislike her, not because of who she is, but because of what her presence prevents from happening. The only crime she has committed is murdering my privacy.

This business of keeping secrets wearies me. Truth to tell, I would trade a dozen nights of passion for one public kiss, just to have it done and over with. I think Sam feels the same. The further we get from Cyre, the more ridiculous this charade seems. One kiss, I would be free of it. And in another sackful of trouble entirely, of course. Still, it might be worth it…

And I _really_ need to start writing about something else. _Anything_ else.

Victor assures us that we ought to reach Ka'rhashan – I cannot believe that I can still remember how to spell that correctly – tomorrow, or the next day. Indeed, he seems surprised that we have not been hailed by Lizardfolk lookouts or rangers yet. Apparently, the Lizardfolk guard their holy city well: one does not find Ka'rhashan, Ka'rhashan usually finds you. The absence of sentinels makes Victor uneasy. Either we are farther from the city than we think, or the Cold Sun tribal outriders have seen us but are avoiding speaking to us, or something has silenced the lookouts. Still, we must be nearing something 

important, because we have lately stumbled upon signs of… Well, my professors would have called them Loci Esoterica, but I continue to think of them as Weird Shit.

It started yesterday. Up until that point, I could have believed that we were stumbling through a vast, primeval wilderness; that we had stepped off the edge of the known world. Except for spear-wielding lizard-things, I haven't seen the least sign of intelligent life since leaving Newthrone. Not even an old, discarded arrowhead, or a broken pot. But yesterday we stumbled upon a small shrine dedicated to one of the Dark Six. At first I thought it was a piece of junk: it looked like an old wagon-wheel, nailed to a tree. But investigation showed that it was adorned with a number of tiny trinkets – stones with holes in them, shiny beads, feathers, lizard skulls – tied up with string and hanging from the spokes of the wheel. Victor explained that it was a shrine to the Traveler. Lizard-folk, or some Tharashk guides, would hang up tiny offerings to the faceless god of roads before departing on a lengthy journey. Victor did not approve of the practice. He seems to hold worship of the old, dark gods in great contempt. I wonder what he would think of me, if he knew.

As we departed, I caught Sam furtively tying a small length of string around a gold coin. She gave me a sheepish grin. When Victor had just passed beyond sight she tied it to the wheel and gave it quick spin. Though it may have been my imagination, I thought I felt a small breath of wind stir the clearing; more than the spinning wheel and the patter of its tiny trinkets would account for.

Interesting.

This morning, we encountered something truly strange. After patiently fording a dangerous, neck-deep river which lay across our path– half-aquatic Lizard-folk apparently don't see the point in building bridges – and then carefully removing all the leeches, we stumbled upon the strangest clearing I have ever seen. The edges of it were perfectly geometrical, as if someone had drawn a line across the forest floor with a God-sized razorblade, and scraped away all the trees. The floor of the clearing was so black and still and flat that for many moments I thought it was a bottomless pit, and then I perceived that it must be a great, rectangular pond filled with brackish water, for nothing else in nature could possibly be so uniform and smooth.

Then Victor walked upon it.

It was obsidian. A hunk of gleaming black obsidian, formed into the shape of a rectangle thirty two and one quarter paces across and sixty four and a half paces long (both Sam and Razze insisted on measuring it). Looking down at it was like looking into a mirror in a darkened room; you perceived yourself, but only dimly, and I got the impression that there were many subtle differences between my reflection and my true appearance, and I distinctly felt that if I walked away, my reflection my remain.

It was, in other words, spooky. And speaking as both a wizard and a generally evil bitch, when I call something spooky, it damn well is.

Victor explained, although it wasn't much of an explanation. During the war between Dragons and Demons at the dawn of time, the infernal armies built enormous, unholy siege engines to assault the 

rocky eyries where dragons make their homes. In order to move these ponderous contraptions from their profane forges deep underground to their destinations, the demon princes first had to construct roads to move them over, because the huge, spiky iron wheels of the engines were so heavy that they immediately became mire in any soil softer than solid rock. This obsidian slab was millions of years old: a paving stone left over from one of the great demonic thoroughfares. Victor explained that there were a few dozen of them left, scattered around Ka'rhashan; why those few remain he does not know, nor what happened to the thousands of other slabs that must have once crossed the landscape.

After we learned this, no one wanted to walk across it. We edged around the clearing, and left it fast behind.

We found one other such slab, just before dusk, and we had to make camp a short distance from it. I can't say that I find its presence comforting, but I don't fear it. It's lain there for a million years: I doubt it's going to wake up any time soon. Still, I don't expect to see much sleep tonight. Perhaps I shall exhaust myself with physical exertion; Razze always wants a rematch to our duel.


	15. 12: Wherein Chandra gets schooled

Sorry for the delay. Here's chapter.... I don't even remember. Call it chapter 12.

* * *

"I'm a woman," Neana said.

Since the tip of Razze's slender wooden practice sword was resting right between her breasts, this was fairly obvious. Neana was lying prone and empty handed on a patch of mossy ground. She struggled to remember the exact sequence of events that had left her on the ground with a splitting headache. Let's see: she had moved like so, and Razze had riposted like so, and her own weighted wooden blade had gone spinning off into the underbrush and the ground hard risen up to bid her a cheerful, lichen-encrusted hello.

At least it was soft lichen.

"I'd noticed," Razze said. He helped her to her feet. "A few times. In passing."

"Shut up. I'm making a point." She dusted herself off before retrieving her practice blade. "I'm a woman; ergo, I'm not a man."

From her seat by the fire, Sam piped in, "'Ergo' is fancy wizard talk for 'therefore'. In case you didn't know."

Razze said, "Fancy that."

Neana ignored the interruption. "It's a great advantage, not being a man. It means that I don't have to put up with any kind of stupid male bullshit. And I lack the weaknesses of men."

Razze quirked an eyebrow. "Such as?"

"Like a fragile ego. Or overweening pride. Or… what's the word? I forget. The thing that makes men act so damn… male all the time?" Razze grinned and opened his mouth. "No, not _that_." Neana said firmly. "Not something in their pants: something in their heads."

"Machismo," Chandra supplied with a throaty chuckle. She, Sam, and Victor were sitting by the fire playing Three Dragon Ante, using a tightly packed bed-roll as a table. A pile of small stones filled the place where the pot would normally go: after the first night they had all agreed that Sam couldn't be allowed to play for real coins.

"Machismo…" Neana tasted the word. "Yes. That sounds right. That's the thing that makes men act like puffed up idiots, isn't it? Like how they never admit when they're in over their head, or that they're lost and they need directions, or when they've been beaten?"

Razze's eyes sparkled. He adopted a loose fencer's stance, his sword arm resolutely aimed at her, his left arm akimbo. "I wouldn't know. I've never been beaten."

"That's what I'm talking about," Nana groused. "That's the attitude I—" Without warning, without even finishing her sentence, between one breath and another, Neana attacked. She had learned to her cost that Razze had a near-clairvoyant ability to read the subtle shifts in stance and poise that indicated a preparation to attack, and so she hadn't prepared this one. It was a blind, naked lunge; pure offense, a move you'd find in no sword manual. Razze was faster than her, but Neana was slightly stronger, and had both the initiative and a longer reach. Her charge was unstoppable.

Razze stopped it. The tip of his wooden sword brushed hers, and pushed it aside. Razze flowed around the lunge like water, and Neana's momentum carried her past him, so that they ended up switching places, with their backs to one another. Razze's insane speed hadn't been entirely unexpected, however, and even as he flowed past her Neana was already making the next attack. She reversed the stroke and spun to smash him with the hilt of her sword. He barely managed to parry this new ploy, and by the time he discovered that it had been a feint Neana was already driving her knee up between his legs. He had to throw himself out of her way, all style momentarily abandoned, to avoid losing one of the aforementioned parts that made him male.

Somehow, impossibly, Razze turned the awkward fall into a graceful somersault. He came up grinning. Then he lunged.

Neana was tired. They'd been at it for over an hour. Endurance wasn't her strong suit: she was a shocktrooper. Her job was to lead the first assault, to make a breech for others to fill. She was used to crashing into the front lines and fighting until she ran out of spells, and if the enemy wasn't routed by that point, or her marines hadn't arrived to reinforce her, things were very, very wrong. She lacked the stamina for a prolonged engagement. Neana was flagging badly; that sudden charge had used up what little energy she'd managed to regain from her quick lie-down on a bed of lichen, and now she was tired and sore and slow and out of breath. She managed to block his first attack, but not his second. His "dagger", a thick chunk of broken tree branch, came at her head and it was all she could do to twist and catch the blow on the shoulder.

It hurt like a son of a bitch.

She dropped her sword, and held up her hands. "Yield! I yield," she croaked. She rubbed her shoulder ruefully. "Ouch."

Razze paused, hovering on the balls of his feet. Instantly he was loose again, the picture of nonchalant poise. "Are you hurt?" he asked, genuinely concerned.

"I'm fine," she said automatically. It was a reflexive response: if her arm had been torn off and spurting at his feet, she would have said the same thing. "Don't you ever get tired?" She complained. Her voice, always hushed and gravelly, now had a reedy, whiny edge to it. She hated that, but she couldn't help it. Just holding a conversation played hell with her vocal chords.

Razze shrugged. "I suppose so. But not yet. We've only been at it an hour." He wiped sweat from his brow with one lean forearm. The only concession Razze had made to exertion was to strip his shirt off, so that he now fought barefoot and bare-chested, in loose sailor's pants. He was lean, with a swimmer's physique and willowy elven grace, and right now his muscles were oiled with a fine sheen of sweat. The somersault had mussed up his hair, so that it fell around his ears in tousled curls. It was probably all very masculine and impressive, if you were interested in that kind of thing.

Chandra and Sam had been sneaking glances at him the entire time. Chandra's amethyst eyes practically smoldered. From time to time she reached up to readjust hair that, to Neana's eye, didn't need adjusting. Neana made a mental note of that: it was rare to see the broody kalashtar display any kind of human frailty, least of all lust.

"That's exactly what I'm talking about. Machismo. Well, I don't have any damn machismo, so I don't mind admitting that I'm exhausted." Neana wandered over to the fire, and collapsed. "And lacking machismo, I don't even mind that you've won nine matches—"

"Ten," he corrected.

"—to my two." Neana blew the hair out of her eyes. "I don't mind at all. My self-image is built of sterner stuff than that_." And besides,_ she thought smugly, _if it had been a real fight, I'd have my armor and my magic, and you'd be a red smear._

Razze nodded amiably. "That's good to hear. That's a very adult view that you've taken there."

"Exactly."

"It was particularly mature of you, I thought, not to point out how you were operating on a handicap. I'm sure that if you had used your magic, you would have beaten me almost every time."

There arose one of those brief, awkward silences.

There was a brief internal struggle, which Neana lost. "Sam?" she said.

"Yes?" The changeling was facing away from her; all she could see was white hair and a pair of gray ears.

"You can stop grinning now."

This struck them all as funny: everyone else laughed, and even Neana smiled with genuine good humor. Truth to tell, she didn't really mind losing. Much. She enjoyed the fight for the fight's sake.

Neana rifled through her backpack until she found _On Elemental Binding_, and took a seat by the fire. Wearily, she took up the long, laborious task of rereading a handful of pages that she had already read a hundred times before, searching for some new piece of information. She had to have missed _something_. If only she could find the key… Some of her frustration must have shown in her face, because Razze, still standing on one leg after finishing a graceful sword-kata, asked her what she was doing. "I'm trying to learn a new spell," she told him.

"Oh," he said, with the blank politeness of non-practitioner. "I bet that's hard?" he hazarded.

"Incredibly so."

"Well, how long have you been trying for?"

"A year and a half."

Razze stumbled. "More than a year? It takes you more than a year to learn one spell?"

She just shrugged. "Now you know why more people don't become wizards." She went back to her reading. Razze only grunted, and resumed his practice forms.

Time passed – She couldn't say how much – but eventually, after the twentieth time Chandra blushed and straightened her already immaculate hair, and the hundredth time Neana read the same passage without an inkling of dawning comprehension, she sighed and put the book down. She caught Sam's eye, and nonchalantly tapped a hand against her knee.

They'd taught her to finger-talk at the orphanage. Old Lector Sexton had been fat and drunk and gross and, of course, _old_, but he'd had a fine education once, and he knew many amazing things: the secret of mute-speaking had been among them. From the day of her parents' death to the year she turned twelve, Neana had not spoken a single word: too much damage had been done to her throat and vocal chords, and she could only make painful, weak croaking noises. So, while her body had healed itself, and while she had began to relearn how to use her cracked vocal chords again, she had spoken with her hands. Decades later, she still remembered the language of Finger-talk; it had even come in useful on the ship. She'd taught a few basic phrases to her under-Sergeants, so that no matter how loud the din of battle got, or how weak her voice was, she could still issue orders and have them instantly obeyed. On the long, slow journey out of Cyre she'd begun teaching Sam a few words in their bunk at night, but the Changeling had an astonishing capacity with languages, and within a month she was a fluent as Neana.

The conversation went as follows:

"It's sickening," Neana said, with the double-tap of the pinky finger that indicates mock-anger.

The hand Sam wasn't using to hold her cards said, "What is?"

"The way the two of you were staring at him."

"Who, Razze?" Sam made the folded palm motion of contrite apology. "I'm sorry, but he's stare-worthy."

"And I'm not?"

"Tell you what: next time you fight, _you_ take _your_ shirt off. Then you'll get all the attention you can handle," Sam signed, followed by the rippling motion that passed for laughter in Finger-talk.

Neana made dutiful laughing gestures. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Sam's hands were still for a long time. Finally, with a furtive motion that seemed almost shameful, she said "Yes." She turned her face away.

Neana was left staring awkwardly at the changeling's back. It seems that she wasn't the only one suffering from the lack of privacy. With a sigh, she looked away… right into Victor's eyes. The old hobgoblin was staring at her with his usual flat expression, although she thought she caught his broad lips twitching slightly. The old gobbo couldn't possibly speak finger-talk, could he? "Miss Tacey," he said. "Would you like to be dealt into our little game? I'm sure that your friends, Miss Sitari and Miss Sam, would not object." Without even glancing at her, Sam flicked six cards from the draw pile to land at Neana's feet: if Neana hadn't been looking for it, she never would have noticed that only four of them came from the top of the deck.

Neana pushed the cards back at them. "No," she said, and then belatedly added, "thank you."

"Why not?" Sam asked. "I'll spot you the stake. We're only using pebbles, anyway."

"Because you cheat," Neana answered flatly. "All of you."

"That's a vile accuracy," Sam said with a grin, but her words were quickly overtaken by Chandra's outraged "I do not!"

Neana shrugged. She hadn't meant it to be an insult, just an observation. But if the haughty kalashtar wanted to take offense, Neana was willing to give it. "Yes you do. You read minds."

"Contemptible lies!"

Neana rolled her eyes. "Back in the Guard's Rest, you offered to team up with me to bilk everyone else at the table. I know it was you, because no one else can shove words directly into my head. You're a cheater."

"I do n—" Chandra hesitated. It was true. Conflicting emotions briefly crossed her face as her eternal fastidiousness warred with her hatred of being proved wrong. Finally she pursed her lips, as if swallowing all the sourness in the world, and said, "I do not read minds. That would be a violation of privacy, and an abusive use of my talents. I simply established a mental conduit, such as Kalashtar often use to communicate with one another. I did nothing more than use the additional senses innately possessed by my people from birth. That can hardly be called cheating. Is it cheating to use one's intrinsic natural gifts to excel?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Yes."

Chandra sniffed. "Considering the company I keep, I ought to cheat; it would only put me on an equal footing with these two. I would swear that this one," she pointed at Sam, "is a born criminal. And I could not even peer into her mind if I wished to; as far as I can determine, the realm between a changeling's ears contains nothing but a dense, roiling confusion of random images and sounds. It is like trying to grasp fog."

Sam nodded amiably. "It's true. Even I don't know what I'm thinking half the time."

Chandrasitari jabbed a finger at Victor. "And this one has better luck with cards than any mortal has a right. He has drawn the Lord Bahamut three gambits running."

Victor smiled his placid little smile. "That's just skill, Miss. I've had years and years of practice. I promise you: I only play the cards as they are dealt to me."

"Yes. Well. That may be," Chandra admitted. "But I would appreciate it if you would at least stop trying to form a crude mental shield. It is giving me a headache."

Victor wrinkled his forehead, which turned his thick brows into a single, shaggy eyebrow. "How is that, again? What shield?"

"For the past half an hour, I have been receiving – no, that is too weak a word – I have been _inundated_ with images of some type of hideous monster. A gross, hairy creature possessing a truly horrible visage. These visions even manage to bleed through some of my strongest mental barriers. Now, it is a common misconception among the uninitiated that holding a single, unpleasant image in one's mind and thinking of nothing else is an adequate defense against mental intrusion. However, all this tactic truly does is to give everyone with the least psionic sensitivity within a hundred feet a splitting headache."

Victor only looked more confused. "What's a psionic?" he implored.

When Chandra opened her mouth, no doubt to begin some kind of lengthy lecture, Neana cut in: "Mind magic."

"Ah."

Chandra was annoyed. "Do you deny that you have been raising a defense against me? I know I should have become accustomed to being distrusted by others after they began calling me a Mind-witch, but I really did not expect this level of suspicion from you, Victor. You have always struck me as a reasonable, rational individual. "

"I still don't know what you're talking about. Hideous monster? Mental images…" Victor trailed off. The confusion drained out of his face and was replaced by something totally unreadable. Over a period of several minutes he made as if to speak numerous times, before he finally said, "I _have_ been thinking about someone a great deal lately, but I do not think that I would use the word 'hideous' to describe them."

Something in the hobgoblin's voice made Neana, who had only been paying partial attention to the conversation, perk up her ears.

Victor continued: "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's only natural, after all, for a man, alone in the wilderness, with hundreds of miles separating him from home and hearth, to think of his wife."

There was a short, sharp intake of breath. "Wife?" Chandra asked, quietly horrified.

"Yes," Victor replied placidly. "My wonderful, charming, patient, long-suffering wife. I have been thinking of her a great deal, lately. Perhaps your psionics spells have been detecting that. She is an Orc, you see."

"Ah."

"Zarketa d'Tharashk. A lovely lady. Fierce, and deadly with an axe, but with the sweetest temperament you have ever seen. I very much regret that my occupation so often takes me from her side."

"Oh."

"I know _some_ disapprove of our union," Victor said, and now he wore an expression of infinite weariness, the face of a man much wronged by the world. "But I have never been one to put much stock in the opinions of the petty and small-minded."

"Look, when I said—"

"Really, aren't the contents of two people's hearts more important than their racial heritage?"

"I didn't mean to imply—"

"Her own House was against the marriage, at first. Of course, the union of Orc and Hobgoblin will produce no dragonmarked scions to join Tharask as dousers or inquisitives, and the Finder's Guild is always thinking of their own pockets. But after I proved my value to her house by winning the acceptance of the Cold Suns tribes, Tharashk deigned to grant me Zarketa's hand in matrimony."

"Please don't take my words to—"

"It was the happiest day of my life."

Neana grinned. This was better than the theater. This was better than the fighting pits. You couldn't _pay_ to see suffering like this.

With every word, Chandrasitari had clutched at the loose folds of her silk robe, hunching her shoulders and winding it around her like a shawl, until only her shining amethyst eyes could be seen over the folds of travel-stained cloth. When he finished, she flinched. From behind her gauzy barrier, she said "I apologize if my words have caused any offense. I only meant them… I did not intend to insult your mate. I'm sure that she is an exemplary woman."

Victor nodded amiably. "No apology necessary."

Chandra's eyes darted around the campfire, never quite meeting anyone's gaze. "The night grows dark, and I must rest. If you will excuse me, I shall retire to my blankets." And with that, she scuttled away.

No one laughed. It was very important, that no one laughed. Later, when Chandrasitari's embarrassment drained away, as it surely would, and was replaced by fury, as it surely would be, they could all claim, with straight faces, that they hadn't laughed.

"Wow," Razze whispered, when the women's' tent stopped rustling and they judged the kalashtar to be out of earshot. "You fight dirty, Victor."

The hobgoblin dropped his usual small, secretive smile in favor of a fanged, toothy grin. "I admit, it felt good. Still, it was probably unworthy of me. Probably."

That made Neana laugh. "Did you really marry an Orc?"

"How else do you think I became Victor d'Tharashk? They don't let just anyone into Dragonmarked Houses." His golden eyes glinted. "And what is wrong with marrying an Orc, may I ask?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I've never seen an Orc I found attractive."

"I have!" Sam chirped. She seemed disappointed when no one seemed to want to take her up on her conversational gambit.

"And I've never met a hairless, pink-skinned human that I would consider _ghul'shulking_, but I don't consider this a failing of their race." Victor smiled. "Nature shapes us all for different purposes, and my wife is, if you will forgive the pun, quite shapely."

"I'm sure she is." Razze tipped the brim of his ridiculously plumed hat to the grinning wilderness guide. "I like your style, friend. "

"Ghul'shulking?" Neana asked. Sam made a vigorous, yet mildly obscene gesture. "Ah. Well, to each their own. "

Neana returned to her book and began patiently tracing the obscure draconic runes with her fingers, attempting to find the pattern hidden within. It ought to be easy. She had a vague recollection of the spell – it was the same one that she had released from the spellshard and used against the Warforged crime boss – and the abjuration matrices had not felt complex while bound within the shard, but she would be damned if she could reconstruct them. Still, she was confident that the correct pattern would occur to her eventually.

Eventually, but not tonight. She gave up right around the time Razze quit his blade exercises, and Sam removed a case from her packsack and began to go through the motions of tuning her lyre. It had become something of a nightly ritual. Sam had taken a box-harp with her into the jungle, an instrument which was to the true concert lyre what a mule was to a thoroughbred racehorse. It was a flat, unmelodic little instrument whose chief virtues were its hardiness and portability, which made it a favorite among sailors. Sam made up for most of its deficiencies by being a truly excellent musician. And while she plucked the notes, she sang.

Sam's voice was like this: no matter what Neana occasionally thought of Sam's personal faults, or her ethical evasions when it came to other people's money, or her emotional neediness, or her unreliability, or her ear-gouging nightly snores, at the end of the day Neana had to admit that her voice made up for all of them. Sam's voice was thunder wrapped in lace. Sam's was as fine a singing voice as Neana had ever heard – or, more specifically, as fine as any Sam had ever heard. That was something people forgot about changelings: they didn't only steal faces. Sam could sound like any singer she'd ever heard, or all of them wrapped into one. And she did, night after night. They all agreed that the music made the time pass more agreeably. Occasionally Victor would join in with a surprisingly mellow baritone, or, more rarely, Chandra would add her own reedy, yet pleasant, mezzo-soprano. Even Razze would often break off his katas in order to keep the beat by clapping his sticks together. Neana never joined in – she couldn't sing, and despite Sam's attempts to teach her to play the lyre, she had little talent – but she did enjoy listening.

But again, not tonight. Tonight, she was exhausted. She stood up and massaged some of the remaining soreness out of her shoulder. "I should be getting some sleep myself. Sleepy wizards are spell-less wizards."

She bid them all good night. On the way to the tent, she caught a glimpse of several moons reflected in the obsidian stillness of the infernal slab. Pearly Zarantyr was ascendant, pale Barrakas was waning, but what gave her pause was the third moon: dull, filmy Lharvion. It seemed far brighter than it should be in its obsidian reflection, and the dark crevice that marred its surface made the moon seem more than ever like a pale, brooding eye. She didn't shiver, because she wasn't the type of woman who shivered, but she did feel a certain flutter in her stomach. Neana could recognize a portent when she saw one.

She found Chandra cocooned within a web of blankets, with several of her robes wadded up and wrapped around her head to muffle the sound of the singing, as well as the laughter she surely feared was being had at her expense. Neana unrolled her own blankets, stripped down to her small-clothes, and slipped beneath the sheet. Her last thought, before sleep took her, was an absurd image of Victor and his green-skinned wife performing a wedding waltz across a flawless plain of blackened hell-glass.


	16. 13: Wherin there is a dream sequence

Darkness. Darkness and sound: sharp, splintery cracks and long, aching groans. It struck deep to the core of Neana's sailor's heart, because those were the sounds of a ship in its death throes. A deep tremor shook the wood that she was lying on, and she came to full awareness with an abrupt start. Something warm and thick and slimy and unpleasant was pressed against her face. She lifted her head; it took more than a little effort, and it came free of the floor with a moist sucking sound. Though she couldn't see it, she could feel the floor slanting away from her at an unpleasantly steep angle; she was sliding slowly and inexorably downwards. Worst of all, she felt cold, clammy water lapping at her ankles.

Terror rose up in her, the ancient fear: her ship was sinking.

It took her two false starts to rise to her knees. She was, she realized, bone weary. She was also in great pain, but it was that special, dreamy, unreal kind of pain; the kind that promised agony tomorrow. The kind of pain that told her that she might die of blood loss in an hour, or in ten minutes, or never, but that here and know she was alive. Lucky her. Out of sheer habit she reached over her shoulder for _Sharneth_ – being armed was always some comfort – but her hand closed over empty air. She tried again with her left hand, and nearly knocked herself unconscious. _What the hell?_ Something huge and heavy was strapped to her wrist. At first she thought that it was an iron fetter – it wouldn't be the first time she'd been locked in the brig – but her questing fingers told her that it was wooden. What kind of moron had tied a plank of wood to her arm?

_No_. _Not a plank_, she thought, feeling along the iron rimmed edge of it, _but a shield_. Goddess, but her brain was full of fog. But that made no sense. She hadn't used a shield since…

Since…

Suddenly, she remembered where she was. When she was. Of course she didn't have _Sharneth_ slung over her shoulder; this was the day that she'd earned it. They'd also given her the eight-pointed Royal Star of Gallantry, and a promotion, for her actions this night. She had been, very briefly, a hero.

And since all of this had clearly already happened, that meant that she was dreaming. Well, that was a relief.

Neana listened to the groan and creak of wood under tremendous stress. She knew that there were – there had been? – a few million gallons of seawater suspended over her head. The _Bellhammer_ had gone down with all hands, sucked into a whirlpool called up by the besieged Thranish priests of Arythawn Keep. That had been, what, 979? 980? Before the holy Messengers had risen up and thrown them out of Thrane, and then hurled the Cyran forces all the way back to Kalazart in the winter campaign.

She remembered that day. This day. The Captain and half the crew had been swept overboard as the ship had first listed, and then rolled hull-up into the whirlpool's watery maw. Neana had only survived because before she had even realized that the ship was doomed she had sprinted for the dubious safety of the closest hatchway. With the ship rolling a full ninety degrees, she had fallen down the ladder, and crawled and staggered up the wall – which was now the floor – of the passageway, always only a few steps ahead of a wall of brackish, churning seawater. She couldn't quite remember how she'd made it to the lower reaches of the bilge, but that's where she was now. Fortunately the _Bellhammer_ had been a stout and Weatherly old ship, and her hull had been constructed of pure heart-of-oak. As the ship had rolled, and water had smashed the bulkheads and poured through the larboard scuppers, the huge, heavy keel of the ship hadn't shattered; her spine never broke. This meant that even as she rolled and sank, there remained a bubble of air trapped in the bottom – now the top – of the vessel, which Neana and a dozen other survivors had managed to stumble upon. It was a tiny wooden sanctuary surrounded on all sides by black, muddy water.

_Some sanctuary_, Neana thought. _More like an airtight grave. But we escaped it, didn't we?_ She couldn't remember exactly how it had happened, but it had. She had only dim memories of darkness an rushing and terror, and the absolute certainty of drowning. And then she was being hauled bodily onto the deck of the _Sea Hag_, puking up salt and seawater. She had lain there gasping, concentrating on pulling sweet, clean air into her lungs, and only dimly aware that she was the center of an attentive crowd. It had come as a chock when someone put a hand on her shoulder, and someone else enthusiastically pumped her damp, unresisting hand, and everyone congratulated her.

They told her that she was a hero. They told her that she had saved them all. They said that she had been icy calm; the very soul of winter. They said that she had moved with purpose and calm surety. They said that she had broken the jaw of a green ensign when he wouldn't cease his screaming hysterics. They said that she had come up with a plan.

The bilge of a ship is full of water and oakum and tar and shit, all mixed together into an unimaginable foulness, but it's also the place where a ship's ballast is stored. Along with the heavy, rounded ballast stones, anything that the ship needed that wouldn't be ruined by seawater is stored there, carefully positioned and chained down to keep it from shifting at sea: barrels of lamp oil wrapped in sodden blankets, spare spars and timbers for repairing the ship, and, of course, the huge casks of salted pork that could feed a hundred sailors for months at sea. The huge, tough, wax-sealed, absolutely _watertight_ casks.

The crew had uncapped the barrels, spilling out a round imperial ton of salt-pork all over the planking. The carbolic scent of preserved pig must have been absolutely nauseating, and it would have only gotten worse when the crew climbed inside. They said that Neana had sealed the cask up behind them. They said that the water was up to her knees by this point. They said that, after this, she had tied herself to an empty ale barrel and had then, somehow, hacked or burned or blasted a hole through the ship's keel. They had listened to the splintering from within their stinking prison. As the water rushed in, and the air rushed out, the barrels had been thrown to the surface. They said that she had saved them all.

Neana wasn't sure she believed it. It certainly didn't sound like her, except for maybe the part where she broke a superior officer's jaw for being a twit. She wasn't the heroic type: she thought of herself as more of a wry, sarcastic observer, or possibly a terse warrior bitch. That was her niche. But she was alive, so someone must have been feeling heroic that day. And the medal had certainly come in handy later, hadn't it? When there were those questions about the dead Valenar captives, and whether or not they had really been trying to escape ... And the alleged insubordination against elven officers…

Why had she returned to this time and place in her dreams?

Shrouded in darkness so total that even her inherited elven eyes couldn't see, Neana nevertheless moved about the deck with absolute confidence. It was a dream, after all, dredged up from her memories; everything had to be exactly where she recollected it. And so she was quite surprised when it only took her three steps to stumble over something: she tripped, and nearly fell flat on her face. As she tried to get her legs back under her, to regain her balance, she put one booted boot down with a wet, meaty, crunch. When she tried to jerk her foot back, she was met with a gristly squelch and horribly familiar snapping sound.

She froze. She tried to tell herself that she hadn't steppin in what she thought she had just stepped in.

I'm a wizard, Neana thought. So why don't I by-gods act like it? "_Lucris_," she said. And there was light. The barest wavering of magic thrummed in her viens, and four small, glowing, blue balls of cold flame appeared around her head, gently circling like an azure halo. In the flickering light of occult fire, the true nature of the _Bellhammer_'s bilge was revealed.

It was a charnel house. Broken limbs littered the floor and gore spattered the walls. Partially dismembered corpses floated in the rising, murky, tide welling up from the aft hatch. Rivers of blood ran through the cracks between floorboards. Neana had heard the term torn asunder before, but up until now she had never really understood it. Now she did. These sailors, the last handful of the _Hammer_'s crew, had been torn asunder. Something truly heinous had taken each of them and ripped their limbs off, taking enormous bites out of whatever flesh lay close to hand and then scattering their limbs across the area. The thing Neana had stepped in, the thing that her foot was still firmly embedded in, was a human torso. Well, part of a torso. She wrenched her boot free with a bones-napping sound.

"Oh, shit."

Had it been real, Neana would have vomited: she might be jaded a cynical, jaded bitch, but she wasn't that hard. Not yet. This was far worse than the goriest battlefield that she had ever seen, and she had seen ships' decks torn to splinters by axe, arrow, and spell. But she couldn't sick up: the same dream-logic that told her body that she was in pain, without actually being painful, told her stomach roil, without any actual accompanying nausea.

Without transition, Neana found that the hold, so familiar a moment ago, was now full of lurking shadows and strange sounds. Whatever had massacred these people might still be in here with her. Neana flinched when she heard a low moaning sound next to her head. Had that been the ship creaking under the stress of a million tons of waters, or the sound of a terrible beast creeping up on her? Her hand instinctively went for _Sharneth _again, which just shows how much of an idiot instinct is. She fumbled at the unfamiliar scabbard at her side, but that was empty as well. Fuck. She pressed her back to the ship's curved flank and held her shield protectively before her. With a wave of her hand she scattered her little lights to the far corners of the bilge, but that did no good: it only made the shadows shudder and shiver, and now she couldn't see what was immediately around her. She called them back. The tiny, dancing lights flickered as they returned to her: one darted too close to her unshielded arm, and was pulled, as if against its miniature will, to her hand. The pale blue flame stretched and flowed like oil poured over water to cover her palm. Her fist was wreathed in flame, and her wrist, and curling veins of fire traced down her forearm. In the center of the cool inferno sat a few shining strands of silver, with bright blue gemstones interwoven among them, sparkling in the azure mage-light.

Sam's bracelet, she thought. That shocked her with its anachronicity. Sharneth isn't here but the bracelet is. And the bracelet seems to draw the cold fire to it like a lodestone. Hmmm…

Crunch!

This time it definitely wasn't the sound of tortured planking. There was another crunch, and a splash, and Neana spun on her heel. She saw, to her horror, one of the corpses being slowly dragged behind the curved bulk of a huge pork-cask. The body was that of a young female petty officer. It gave another twisting jerk, followed by a wet crunch, and a gory spray as gobbets of red flesh were flung into the water.

Something was apparently a very messy eater.

Neana's eyes darted around the hold, searching for a weapon. By rights there ought to have been dozens, with all these dead sailors and marines lying about. But no; with the warped insight of a dream, Neana knew that she would find no weapons, no matter how hard she searched. You never had weapons in nightmares. You always had to face your fear naked and unarmed. Well, fuck that. Her eye alighted upon a length of wood: part of the slender yet supple timbers used to repair the spars. She grabbed one end of it, put her boot to the midsection, and pulled. It broke in half with a mercifully quiet snap. She tucked the unbroken end under one arm and stared at her impromptu spear. The splintered end looked painfully sharp, but it was only wood, not good steel. Still, it made her feel better.

Neana stared at it, and had one of those sleepy dream insights: the jagged, splintered end was nearly the thing she needed. It was… almost right. It just needed something; and if she could find it, if she could shape the proper weapon, she could stab her way out of this nightmare.

This needed thought. Neana cleared her mind, using some old Mage School tricks to attain the right state of thoughtless void. This was where invention came from. You made an empty cup out of your mind, and waited for inspiration to strike. She sensed a shape in her thought, grasped the tail edge of some secret both huge and important. The spear: it ought to be…

Crunch!

The hungry eater reached the poor petty officer's boots, chewed thoughtfully, and spat them out with a plop. The sound should have been darkly funny, but again, that strange dream logic wouldn't let her laugh. Whatever insight Neana had almost had fled from her. The thing in her hand was just a crude spear; mute and crude and disapointing. With a snarl, she called the last of her lights back to her, channeling them into the bracelet. Cold light flared, and the blue flames crept up her arm to the shoulder, and spread from her hand to the spear. It was only an illusion, but Neana hoped that the sight of a flaming spear would frighten the mysterious monster. As quietly as she could manage in chainmail, she sidled around the edge of the barrel and prepared to thrust.

She gasped. It was…

"Teeth! Fire!" Neana shrieked, as she sat bolt upright in the tent. Sweat beaded her forehead, her upper arms, and the skin between her breasts. Her chest heaved, as if she had just run a long race. Her muscles clenched and spasmed, and her fingers curled convulsively into dangerous magical signs.

Cool amethyst eyes regarded her from between the folds of a loose sleeping veil. They made a theatrical circuit of the tent, as if searching for burning canvas. Then they settled on Neana again. "A bad dream?" Chandrasitari asked.

Neana glanced around. Everything in their little tent was exactly as it should be, except that her blankets had become tangled with her sweating limbs. Sam's pack and bedroll were still where she'd dumped them, in her usual messy pile. Chandra's area of the tent was still precisely delineated by the painstakingly neat arrangement of her sleeping mats. From outside the tent, she heard Sam's voice raised in song. It was "Last Host-day I Gave my True Love a Rose", possibly the most tedious song in the world, but one of Razze's favorites. The last thing Neana could recall before drifting off to sleep, Sam had been on the second day, and the anonymous maiden gave just given her true love two kissing-sparkhawks and a white courting rose. Now she had nearly worked her way through the entire sixteen day long official ecclesiastical week of the Sovreign Host, which meant that on Dornday she had given her love fourteen bawdy tumblers, thirteen wandering minstrels, twelve trueborn knights, eleven chaste young milkmaids, and all the rest. That meant that Neana had only been asleep for… what, three minutes? Could it have possibly passed that quickly?

"Yes," Neana said lamely. "A bad dream. Just a bad dream." Already the details were escaping her. She had been on a ship? Or… beneath a ship? No, that made no sense. She must have been on a ship. But then why had it been dark?

"Sometimes great portents can be found in dreams." Chandra said. "Would you speak of it?"

"No," Neana said firmly. Her dreams were never good, and deserved to be forgotten.

Chandra shrugged, and settled back into her covers, as if what Neana did or did not want to speak of held no interest to her. Neana watched the strange woman lay back stiffly on her hard little mats, fold her arms over her chest, and close her eyes. It was a very tidy and economic way of sleeping; it reminded her of the Girl's Home she had grown up in, where young ladies had been packed into beds like pickled fish in a barrel. It was how some of the veteran sailors slept in their hammocks, packed together in the far aft end of the ship, which was odd: as a Ship's Navigator, Chandra warranted a lieutenant's berth. It wasn't a great luxury, but it wasn't as cramped as the common seaman's sling. And the kalashtar had never been a common sailor anyway. Neana reflected that she didn't know where Chandrasitari had come from before her naval life; presumably somewhere where people slept in close quarters. Had Chandra mentioned something about a monastery once?

Neana, with a great mental effort, put aside the receding memory of her nightmare. She dredged up one of the few facts that she had heard about the strange, nearly human people who lived across the Sea of Rage. What was I she had heard? Oh yes. "I thought you people didn't sleep?"

Chandra's eyes snapped open. She sat up. "You people," she murmured, as if tasting the words. Neana got the feeling that she was filing the remark away for future study. "Where did you hear that?"

Neana shrugged. "From people. Around."

"From people. I'd like to meet these 'people'. Well." Her pale purple eyes narrowed. "They were nearly correct, while at the same time being entirely mistaken. I am a _kalashtar_. You know of the Kalashtar?"

Neana nodded. "I've heard the word. They're humans, from across the eastern seas. That's where the humans came from, originally, isn't it? Thousands of years ago? From Sarlona, or Riedra, or Adar, or whatever damn name they give to that continent."

Chandra looked horrified, and Neana saw that she had gotten it wrong. "That is… not…" The kalashtar paused, and Neana saw a look she knew well; it was the same face she pulled when Sam asked her about magic, or the look Sam got when Neana's fingers found the wrong chords on a lute. It was the face that said "I am trying to find words small and simple enough to speak to you." It was the face of someone talking to a child.

Neana sighed: she hadn't really cared. She had only been biding her time until she could work the scare out of her system.

Finally, the kalashtar said. "It is too complicated to explain. Kalashtar are human, but not exactly. Adar is a very – you would say magical – place, and it changes people and things. The kalashtar need to sleep, the same as everyone else, but we are unique in that we do not dream."

"No dreams?" Neana considered this. That was a stranger answer than she had been prepared for. "So when you go to sleep, you just—"

"Wake up several hours later, fully refreshed. The same as anyone else." Chandra said, firmly. "Unless we're interrupted, of course," she added sarcastically.

Neana was still musing. "No dreams. No nightmares either, though. I suppose that could be a fair trade."

"I would not know," Chandra said. The kalashtar closed her eyes. After a time, in which Neana straightened her own sleeping blankets and tried to punch her lumpy 'pillow' into something a head could rest on, she heard Chandra say. "If it comes to that, I thought that elves did not sleep."

These words had the effect of throwing lamp oil onto a smoldering fire. Neana froze. Carefully, picking out each word warily, like an unfired firework that might explode angrily at any moment, she said, "_Elves_ don't sleep." She put extra emphasis on the word elf, pushing it out as hard and fast as possible, to llessen the time it spent on her lips. "Instead, they enter a… a sort of meditative trance, for a few hours every night, in order to rest." Poncy buggers probably thought they were too good to waste time sleeping like the mortal races. Not only did they live almost forever, they lived more out of each day as well. She added firmly. "And I'm not an elf."

"Ah. I see." Chandra rolled over, and Neana felt, rather than saw, a pair of violet eyes regarding her. "Do elves dream? In this trance?"

"Something like that," Neana said carefully. "They dream, or vividly remember, or something." The Valenar believed that they lived out the lives of their ancestors in their trances, Neana remembered.

"Dreams without sleep and sleep without dreams," Chandra mused. And, as if she couldn't let it decently die, she added, "And what of half-elves?"

Neana grunted. "We sleep," she replied sarcastically. "But only half as much. And that's mostly because the constant chattering keeping us up all night." With that she rolled over, gritted her teeth, and pulled the blanket over her head.

In the night beyond the tent, the jungle was filled with song.


	17. 14: Wherein Neana opens her eyes twice

If you had told her a week ago that the last two days of her journey to Ka'rhashan would be the worst, Neana would only have sighed and nodded. That was the kind of thing that validated her views on life.

It started out well enough: Neana awoke feeling oddly well-rested, despite the fact that her sleep had been full of unspecified threats. The group broke their fast with a meal of smoked lizard wrapped in tchell-leaves, liberally garnished with a type of small, round nut they had discovered growing in plenty the day before. The nuts were hard and salty, but still a damn sight tastier than the piles of nothing that had been using for flavoring. It was amazing how fast you could get sick of eating lizard. Neana was starting to grow nostalgic for the taste of salted pork and ship's biscuits.

All through the meal, Razze's fingers worried at his cheeks, chin, and upper lip. "Damn, this is itchy," he kept saying, and also "So prickly and scratchy!" and "like sandpaper!" as he rubbed a thumb along his jaw line. Eventually, after they all got tired of his rampant hinting, Sam dutifully asked him what he had on his mind.

"It's this beard," Razze said, scratching his chin. "It's driving me crazy."

They looked at him. Again, it was Sam who voiced the obvious question: "What beard?"

"This beard!" He stroked his cheeks and upper lip. "And this moustache. Here, and here."

They looked again. Eventually, after much scrutiny, a few light, wispy brown hairs could be seen clinging to either side of his upper lip. "Huh," they said.

"I haven't shaved in more than two weeks," he said, with obvious pride.

"We can see that, lad," Victor said carefully. The bristly hobgoblin, from all appearances, hadn't shaved since the start of the Great War. If he should ever feel the need to do so again, he'd need gardening shears. Or maybe an axe.

"Most half-elves can't even grow facial hair," Razze added, drunk on the prospect of future moustaches. "Except for their heads, most half-elven men are completely hairless. No body hair at all."

This statement was considered carefully by all. Around the ashes of the campfire, four faces became careful, masks. After a moment, Chandra's dusky skin began to redden, and the corners of Sam's mouth started to twitch

"That's true," Neana said eventually. "Many can't. It's because elves don't have body hair at all. Unless the human blood is particularly strong in them, most half-elven men's cheeks are smooth as a babies ass."

"Well, I think it's a wonderful moustache," Sam said cheerfully. "Very butch. Very masculine. That'sthe kind of stubble that a man can be proud of." And they all turned to look at her, because not even Sam could tell a lie that big with a straight face.

When Victor saw her, he burst out laughing. Neana grinned. Even Chandra smiled.

"What?" Sam asked. With earnest confusion blooming on her face, she idly stroked her lip, where a pair of long, white, drooping mustachios had taken root. The silky facial hair flowed all the way down to her waist.

Razze turned pink. "Very funny."

"What's everyone looking at?" Sam asked. As she ran a hand over her chin, it sprouted hair, and within seconds she was sporting a luxurious white beard that would have done a dwarf proud. Birds could have nested in it: entire species of unknown avians could have been thriving in its hirsute depths.

"Look, if you have something to say…" Razze started, but then he laughed, because Sam's beard touched the ground now, and her eyebrows had gotten in on the act; they curled and stretched and twisted to her shoulders. Her face could only be seen in grayish patches between tufts of white hair.

"I don't see what's so funny," she said, by this point looking more like an albino gorilla than a changeling. "Do I have something on my face?" Then she sneezed, and immediately lost control of the ongoing, unstable shapechange; her beard rolled back up into her body so fast that the recoil knocked her down. Neana dutifully helped her to her feet as they all laughed themselves to the point of tears.

"All right," Razze admitted. "I get it. I guess that it won't be seen by passing airships any time soon, but it's still a pretty good growth of stubble for me."

"I think it suits you," Chandra said. "It lends you an air of maturity."

"Nothing wrong with a little hair on a man's face," Victor said, and with these and other such statements, Razze's feelings were mollified.

Neana caught Sam's eye. Her fingers flashed, and said "If I ever catch you doing that again, I will cut off all sex, forever." But she said it with the gentle flick of her wrist that made it teasing in tone.

After checking that no one was looking, Sam replied in kind. "Why? Don't like the bearded-lady look?"

"If I did, I'd be sleeping with Victor's wife."

Sam giggled, and that made a fine beginning to the day. It wasn't until an hour later that an errant thought struck Neana. Her father had rarely shaved. She remembered her father picking her up, and hugging her, and the rough, scratchy feel of his stubble against her face. She remembered the smell of him, sandalwood and smoke and sweat, and how she would always afterward associate it with comfort and safety and non-threatening masculinity. The recollection hurt more than she would have believed, and ruined the beginnings of the first really good mood she had had since the death of Cyre.

But the day didn't really turn to shit until they discovered the cliff, which happened just before noon. They spent all morning trudging up a steep hill, and when they reached the top they emerged from a copse of trees to find a massive grey wall filling the immediate horizon from edge to edge.

"That's impossible," Victor said flatly. But the old gobbo's big amber eyes were wide with shock, which was more naked emotion than Neana had ever seen him show.

"It's a damn big cliff," Razze said, with feeling. "Do we have to climb it?" Though he usually relished the chance to test himself against any kind of physical exertion, he had found the trek up the hill exhausting.

"Perhaps," Victor said, and would speak no more on the subject. "Come on. Easier to walk down a hill than up it." The trees soon blocked their view of the distant, imposing stone.

They reached the foot of the cliff a few hours later, after setting a pace so brisk that Chandra had nearly been crippled twice by tripping over tree roots and loose stones in her heavy silk robes. Victor had even refused to stop and rest for the midday meal, so they were forced to chew their rations – lizard meat wrapped in leaves, again – as they walked. When Victor finally called a halt at the base of the stone expanse, Chandra sprawled full length on the ground, heedless of dirt or mud, and announced that she wasn't moving from that spot for at least an hour.

Victor didn't answer. He was busy looking up. And up. And up. It wasn't an enormous cliff, by cliff standards, but from the Neana's point of view as a potential climber, it was daunting enough. It rose straight up, shockingly vertical, for a hundred and fifty feet, before gradually sloping back, still at a depressingly steep angle for another fifty feet. Neana wasn't sure that they could climb it without some serious mountaineering gear. Though, she reflected, if all else failed she could always fly up it and tie off a rope for the others to climb. Assuming they had brought enough rope.

"That's impossible," Victor said again. Now he looked nervous. "This can't be here."

"I dunno," Sam said. The prospect of ending an exhausting day of wandering through swamps by climbing a sheer cliff taxed even Sam's normally cheerful disposition. She kicked the cliff face for emphasis. "Ow. Yep. Just like I thought: it's real all right. It's a million billion billion tons of solid rock. That seems pretty possible to me. Heck, that's downright _probable_."

Victor ignored her. He unslung the long wooden tube of his map-case and, with surprising speed, spread several maps upon the flat top of a nearby boulder. Neana looked over his shoulder. Some of the maps were delicate, intricate works that would have done a Zilargan scribe proud. Some were patched and old and obviously sown together from brittle fragments of parchment. And some were crude charcoal sketches done on tanned animal hides. Victor appeared to consult the crude hide maps more than the rest.

"What's wrong?" Neana whispered.

He turned his head, peered at her, and considered. Eventually he turned back to a rough map and pointed at a bit of notation. "You see this here?"

Neana looked. The words were in something like High Draconic, except that some of the glyphs were the wrong way round, and others were crudely simplified, like a child's scrawl. Lizard-folk writing, she decided: degenerated and atrophied from the days when their god-like dragon rulers had taught them to write. She took a wild guess: "Well, that's probably the word for 'wall'. And that's… to put forth? Or maybe… 'dangerous wound'?"

"It's says 'the Bleeding Wall', Miss. And if my eyes are lying to me, that's exactly what _that_," he pointed a black-nailed, accusing finger, "is. Stretched right across our path. Only that doesn't make a lick of sense."

"It doesn't?" Neana looked. Well, it definitely appeared to be a wall, although she was willing to reserve judgment on the bleeding part.

"No, Miss." He spoke patiently, yet kindly, as an aged retainer might to an ignorant, spoiled princess who could have his head stricken off with an unkind. It was how he talked to them when he thought they were being stupid, but was too polite to say so. "Because if that's the Bleeding Wall – and I've seen that particular bit of cliff face a dozen times so I should know what it looks like by now – that means that we have to be here." He pointed at a spot on another, more intricate map, which showed all of Q'barra. He indicated a point some distance to the east of the big glyph Neana recognized as Ka'rhashan. "But last night I would have sworn, by all the trees and stars, that we were somewhere near here." He indicated a spot some distance south and west of Ka'rhashan.

Neana considered this. "That's nearly a hundred miles difference."

"Aye."

"That means that we've walked sixty miles past our destination. We'll have to backtrack more than two whole days just to reach the city."

"Aye," Victor said flatly. "And that's impossible. We've been making poor time, this run; this close to the end of the big rain season, the rivers are high and the best fords are impassable. Frankly, I think I've been doing good to make as much progress as I have. There's no chance that we could be this far ahead of my best estimates." He looked down at the map and repeated, "It's impossible."

Chandra glanced up sharply from her apparent swoon. She had been listening. "Nothing that happens is impossible. If we are here, then it is possible. You must have made a mistake, somewhere."

"Mayhaps," he said sourly. "I am getting a bit old. A bit long in the fang, as they say. Mayhaps, in my doddering, I just misplaced a hundred miles."

Sam decided to be the voice of reason today. "Maybe you're wrong about it being that particular cliff. Maybe it's a different cliff that you didn't know about."

"Maybe," he admitted. "We'll take a little rest here, and then we'll go and see. If we are where I think we are, we only have to walk a little ways along the base here and we should find a sign."

It didn't take them long to discover the truth. They hadn't walked more than half a mile around the base of the huge cliff before they felt the first drops. Chandra held a hand out, cupped it, and stared in surprise at what lay in her bronze-skinned palm. "Rain?"

Sam looked up. "Not a cloud in the sky."

Plop. Plop. More drops.

Sam caught another, and they gathered to look at it. The liquid seemed startlingly red in her pale, ghostly-grey palm. She dipped a finger into it, and brought it to her lips. "Salty. Coppery." She glanced up, uneasy. "I know it's silly, but it tastes a bit like… well…"

"Blood." Victor said.

They kept walking. Dark red drops kept falling from the sky.

"It's not really blood," Victor explained. "All the land around here used to be flat, thousands and thousands of years ago. There was a vast tidal basin stretching from the Endworld mountains to the sea. But then there was an earthquake, a huge upheaval, and the land gave way. It made three huge landsdrops – mile long, giant cliffs – beneath Ka'rhashan. It made concentric plateaus out of what used to be plains. And it made the three walls." Several fat drops fell on his upturned face, and he licked at them with an odd, pointed tongue. The drops were coming much faster now. "I guess there used to be underground rivers, or something. I don't know, you'd have to ask one of the boys in the Miner's Guild about that. But I do know that the bottom wall bleeds water ever few hundred feet, straight out of shallow veins in the rock face. And when I say bleeds, I mean bleeds. There must be some rich, red clay underneath Q'barra. The clay mixes with the underground rivers, and then shoots out of the bare rock face in a thousand little waterfalls. So we call it the Bleeding Wall."

They walked in silence for some time. Everyone kept sneaking looks at the wall, which wasn't where it was supposed to be. It was truly raining now, not the dark rush of crimson that she had feared, but fat pinkish drops. It soaked them to the skin. Eventually Neana got fed up, and asked , "So is it the same cliff, or isn't it?"

Victor sighed. "I suppose so. But I'll be damned if I know how. Last night I would swear that we were a hundred miles from here."

"Maybe the land moved," Sam offered. Everyone stared at her, but she only stared back firmly. "It happens. Razze, remember that time we chased those pirates all the way to Stormreach? And when we got there, Captain Klein tried to buy a map of the coast so that we could look for smuggler's coves, only he couldn't, because they said—"

"'Maps don't work in Xen'drik'," he quoted. "I remember, Sam."

"Right. Too much old magic left over from the Empire of the Giants. It warped the land, made distances fuzzy and landmarks unreliable. Three different caravans could leave Stormreach for the Obisidan City at the same time, all taking the same path, and one could get there a day later, another a week later, and the third might never be able to get there at all. Could that have happened here?"

Victor expressed very strong doubts. He didn't quite call them idiots, because they were paying his wages, and also heavily armed, but he did deny it thoroughly. "I've been here twenty years, and I've never seen anything like that."

Neana had been looking upwards during this conversation, directly into the pinkish rain. She opened her mouth. The bitter, salty taste reminded her of the sea. She had been thinking deeply, rolling the problem around with the elven side of her brain while the human side shivered and wondered whether this rain would stain her clothes. Bloodstains, she knew, were a bitch to clean. "Let's find out," she heard herself say.

"Find out what?"

Now why had she said that? But it was true: she knew a method that might turn up some clues. Neana shrugged. "Do any of you have… let me see… a two foot length of string, a candle, and a small rock with a hole in it?" She knew, without looking, that they were staring at her as if she had lost her mind. "The rock doesn't have to have a hole in it, but it does need to be distinctive. Shiny, or pretty."

"Why do you need all that?"

"Magic," she said, and would say no more.

Eventually they found everything she asked for. In the meantime, she was busy drawing a circle in the mud near the cliff and shielding it from the rain with her body. She placed the candle in the center, and drew interlocking, concentric rings around it with her fingertip. She took the length of string from Razze, and tied a loop in one end. It was Chandra who handed her the stone: a shard of purple quartz the size of a finger joint. "Be cautious with that," Chandra said. For once she sounded, not bitchy, but genuinely concerned. "It is precious to me. It has traveled all the way across the oceans, from Adar."

"I won't hurt it." Neana said, and she worked the stone into the loop. She lit the candle, set the swinging stone in motion over the flame, and tried to concentrate.

The others gathered around her, which helped to keep the bloody rain from washing the circle away. They were deeply interested; this was Wizard Work, which you did not see every day. Only Neana knew that all the implements and accoutrements that she had asked for were mostly for show. What she was attempting right now, she could do naked, or with one hand tied behind her back, but this was the way she had learned how to do it in the classroom, with props, so the props helped. Neana stared at the candle flame. She stared at the hanging, swaying, and watched it pass back and forth through the little tongue of fire. She stared at the interwoven circles. She closed her eyes, and hummed gently to herself. She found the center of her mind, the place that the floated above the sea of rage, and cultivated an image of the flame inside. She smiled.

This was real magic. Magic at its most basic, simple, _primeval_ form. It was the arcane equivalent of hammering nails and chopping timber. It felt satisfying to get back to the fundamentals.

Neana opened her eyes.

Then she_ opened her eyes_.

Barbaric shamans often spoke of opening a mystical Third Eye, an eye that saw absolute truth. They claimed that, with the right combinations of dried mushrooms and animal sacrifice, they could see spirits, speak to demons, and wander the worlds between worlds. Neana's Wizard Sight wasn't anything like that. She knew about demons and ghosts and the magical planes that lay beyond this one, and while she was sure that they existed, she never expected something as simple as a candle and a rock to let her see them; that would be silly. What she did now was far more subtle.

The trick of Wizard Sight wasn't mythical: it was analytical. It wasn't about piercing veils, or seeing the invisible world: it was about seeing the visible world, and seeing it clearly. It wasn't a magic trick, but a trick of the mind. All you needed to be a wizard was a willingness to let go of your biases and preconceptions. Well, that, a fundamental understanding of base metaphysical laws, and a deep well of arcane lore to call on in order to correctly interpret your observations.

She looked into the flames, watched the taut vibrations of the string. She traced the endless looping circles until she felt her mind grow clear. She watched the heart of the crystal blaze with light as it passed between the flame and her eyes, and she felt her breathing slow.

Good. She was ready.

She looked up into her teammates' faces, and saw the shadows that lay upon them, and _knew_ things. She saw, from the delicate line of Razze's jaw, that the elven blood ran far stronger in his veins than she had thought. There was a great deal of the fey in him: he might live to be almost two hundred, if he didn't die by violence. She saw the delicate tilt of Chandrasitari's cheekbone, and the subtle glow in her eyes, and suddenly understood that she had been wrong about the _kalashtar_; she had thought them nearly human, with perhaps just a touch of magical blood, like half-elves. She had been wrong. Whatever had been mixed with the blood of the _kalashtar_, it was more alien and uncompromising than any elf. She looked into Sam's face, and turned quickly away. All she saw there was love. She looked into Victor's face, and saw great wells of undiscovered substance within him. Beneath that brutish face there was a rich, inner life. She put that understanding away, for future consideration.

Only then did she turn her eyes to the jungle.

"Oh," she said.

"What do you see?" Sam asked nervously.

"Nothing," she said. She couldn't keep the disappointment out of her voice. "There's nothing there."

The others looked at her. They looked at the jungle, with its thick green fronds and dense, hanging mosses and clinging shadows. It seemed to hold the promise of ancient secrets and unutterable violence. "Are you sure?"

How did you explain? Sam had told her once that hunters, once they had been hunters long enough, eventually developed something she called Forest-eyes. They could look at look at the lay of the land, and the trees and weeds, and learn volumes from them. To them a moss-covered tree wasn't just a big lump of vegetation blocking their view: it was a signpost, pointing the way north. They didn't just see the a patch of mud, they saw all the little signs imprinted in it; the footprints of every animal that had passed that way, the recent history of the forest laid out like a diagram. It wasn't magic, just skill.

Wizard-sight worked the same way; there was nothing special about her eyes, just the mind behind them and some special training. Anyone who knew what she knew could see what she saw. A dozen tiny things –- the flickering of strange hues at the edge of the candle's flame, the odd glint of sunlight off a dewy leaf, the way the trees sometimes swayed gently despite the lack of wind – all spoke to her about the kinds of magic at work around her. And what they said was nothing much.

"There's some magic," she explained lamely. "Background stuff. The kind of low level auras you see around any place full of living things. But nothing special." She struggled to find the right words. "Look, magic is big, flashy stuff. If there was something around here strong enough to throw us a hundred miles, or warp the land, there would be signs of it. The air would hum. The hairs on your arms would stand up. Your teeth would feel loose in their sockets." They all looked disappointed, and Neana felt like she was letting down her profession, so she added. "I do feel a kind of low-key aura: a weak, but omnipresent abjuration effect."

This bit of jargon impressed them. "Would that make the land move around?"

"No, I don't think so. Abjurations are warding magics. They're used for protection, or to trap something. They might explain why the jungles around here are so hostile, though. Someone – maybe someone during the Dragon/Demon War – laid down some serious protective magic, and it might still be making the land hostile to outsiders. It would be greatly weakened by the passing centuries, but enough might remain to make all the animals and plants around here more aggressive than they ought to be."

"Aye?" Victor asked. He was looking at her with new respect. "Well, it's true that there were powerful wardings laid down by the dragons after they won the war. Many of the most powerful demon lords could not be killed, but only constrained forever. Some of them are said to be buried farther south of here. Are you sure that it has nothing to do with why we are not where we are supposed to be?"

"I'm sure." A thought had occurred to her. "But if we see another one of those black obsidian slabs, I might be able to tell you more."

"So, what now?"

Victor sighed. "Now, we climb."

It wasn't as bad as it could have been. After days and days of being in the middle of nowhere, they were now only a few days trek from the ancient seat of a reptilian civilization: they had the satisfaction of knowing that this path had been trod a thousand times before. The lizard-folk of Ka'rhashan sometimes found it necessary to scale the three walls beneath their city, and so, sometime in the ancient past, someone had carved hand-holds into the cliff-face. It wasn't quite a set of stairs and it wasn't quite a ladder, but it wasn't impossibly hard to climb. At first, Victor had fretted over their safety: Sam had experience as a former forest sentinel, but the rest of them hadn't exactly impressed him with their survival skills. Tough they might be, but both half-elves and kalashtar were clearly city-folk, and not at all used to clambering over difficult terrain. In a mutter that wasn't quite under his breath, he worried that the day would end with at least one of them falling and breaking their fool necks. So he was greatly surprised when they laughed and waved away his ropes and harnesses, and it damn well shocked him when all of them, even Chandra, clambered up the rock like mountain goats.

Razze grinned. "We're sailors, d'Tharashk. You think this little rock is hard, you should try climbing a topgallant mast in the middle of a hurricane."

"Yeah," Sam said. "This is what we do all day."

"At least the cliff doesn't rock back and forth like a three day drunk," Neana rasped.

To Victor's bemusement, they climbed the wall surely and quickly. Though the hobgoblin had started ahead of her, Neana drew level with him half-way up the cliff. Below them, Chandra was struggling a bit; climbing rigging wasn't part of the normal duties of a ship's navigator, and she lacked the endurance for long climbs.

"Lieutenant Tacey?" Victor said, and Neana jumped a little, nearly losing her grip.

"Yes?" She grunted. Her own endurance wasn't the stuff of legends. She was more than a little exhausted.

"I believe I have finally figured you out, Mrs. Tacey."

"Oh yes?" Neana didn't like the sound of that. She also didn't like it a moment later, when a noise that had been filling her ears ever since she started climbing suddenly ceased. Sam, ten feet above them both, had just stopped her climbing and was now shamelessly eavesdropping on their conversation.

"Yes." There was laughter in his amber eyes. Victor spoke, enunciating carefully, a single word: "_Khuul'shaarat_."

Neana gaped at him. "How did you know?"

"So I am correct?"

"How in the world did you _know_?"

He shrugged diffidently, which is damn hard to do when climbing. "I was obvious, when I thought about it. You wear armor and use a sword, yet you claim to be a wizard. At first I was skeptical of your claims, but now I am not. And I know of only one thing that fits the facts: _Khuul'shaarat._"

"I haven't heard that word in years. Decades!" She smiled at him; not her spooky-little-elf-girl smile, but a genuine one. It wasn't something many people ever saw. Victor returned her smile with his own crooked, enigmatic little grin.

They returned to climbing.

Neana was proud of Sam: she pretended to respect the privacy of their conversation for five whole minutes before curiosity won out, and she asked, "What's a _Khuul'shaarat_?" She mangled the word, pronouncing it like the low street-goblin she was used to, instead of in the formal tones of High Dargaat.

"Me," Neana replied. "I'm a _Khuul'shaarat. _Technically a_ Khuulai'shaarat, _since I'm a woman."

"You never told me," Sam said accusingly.

"Yes I did," Neana said. "I told you that I was a swordmage. A war wizard. When I was at the University in Metrol, I studied the traditional forms of battle magic, including the _Khuul'loraa_." When Sam still looked confused, she said, "Look: the _Khuul'shaarat_ were a tradition of warrior-wizards in the old goblin empire. The word means… uh…"

"Blade of the Setting Sun," Victor supplied.

Neana nodded absently. "Blades of the Dusk. Halfway between the light and the darkness. They mixed swordplay and sorcery with equal skill, like no one has ever done before or since. They learned how to work magic in heavy armor, how to trace arcane symbols with gauntleted fingers, how to channel raw power through the point of a sword. No other group since has ever been able to equal them: not the Aundairan Knights Phantom, or the Aerenal Bladesingers."

"When it comes to death-dealing," Victor said with grim approval, "Goblins know best."

"You aren't joking," Neana chuckled. "My old instructor was a one eyed Hob named Rragar. Fastest, sharpest, deadliest battle-mage I've ever seen."

Sam was fascinated. "And this is what you do? Battle-magic? Which is somehow different than regular magic?"

"Right."

Razze spoke up. "I always wondered why you didn't wear a robe like other wizards."

"She has one," Sam whispered conspiratorially. Sam's conspiratorial whispers could be heard for half a mile in all directions. "In the bottom of her sea-chest. And a pointy hat. And a stole, with stars and funny symbols embroidered on it."

Neana's cheeks flushed. "Those were my graduation robes," she muttered. Only sheer sentimentality had caused her to keep them all these years. Then, sarcastically, she asked, "Do you really think that the side of a sheer rock wall is the proper place to have a lecture on the various forms of magic?"

"Why not? It'll pass the time."

Neana let out a deep, guttural sigh, but in truth she was gratified for the attention. No one, not even Sam, had ever really wanted to _know_ before. It was frustrating to have spent a decade learning to work minor miracles through willpower and determination, only to have everyone else in the world take that fact for granted.

There was a huge gouge in the rock wall directly above her, where a considerable amount of cliff face had cleaved loose and tumbled down into the jungle below. It made a rough, horizontal shelf; Razze had already reached it, and was sitting comfortably and taking a rest. He offered her a hand, and she allowed herself to be pulled into the little makeshift cave. The granite was blessedly cool against her aching back, and the cleft's walls protected her from the razor winds that scoured the long rock wall. Neana considered the subject of battle magic as she checked on the progress of the rest of the group. Sam had drawn even with Victor, but Chandra was flagging several dozen feet below them. Below them, the jungle was an emerald sea, complete with rippling waves as the wind whipped at the canopy. In the far distance, Neana saw a slowly circling winged shape. _Probably a buzzard_, she thought sourly. _That would be the right kind of omen for this mission._

Neana considered the best way to start her explanation. "Sam," she called down. "Do you remember that old dock-master in Dollen? The one that Captain Klein tried to strangle with his bare hands?"

Sam looked up. "You mean old Doxen Oakrum?" Sweat had plastered her fine white hair across her forehead, but she was grinning. "Poxie Doxie, the man with the padlocked coinpurse? It's easier to get blood from a stone than it is to get supplies out of ole Doxie. You could show up with an engraved warrant signed in triplicate by the entire Admiralty board and the Queen herself, and he'd still want a second opinion before he'd part with a single bag of nails."

"Right. And do you remember what he'd always say whenever anyone wondered why the repairs were taking so long?"

In an unnervingly accurate reproduction of the old man's booming, wine-sodden voice, Sam said, "See, friend, it's like this: you can have it done fast, you can have it done cheap, or you can have it done right. You can't have all three at once. Now, which two shall it be? And before you say 'cheap', remember that I won't be the one trusting my life to the result."

Neana smiled briefly. "Yeah, that's the one. What a prick. Well, magic works in a similar way; you have to pick two. Now, your average wizard – the traditional robe and pointy hat type – she chooses to sacrifice speed. She might be able to draw a dragon-sized amount of raw, arcane power out of the air and tie into an intricate series of locus-runes, but she can only do so by tracing dozens of mystical symbols in the air, reciting the name of a diabolic Rajah backwards, and twisting her mind into a series of knots. If anything breaks her concentration, even for a moment, even just to jostle her arm or still her tongue, the whole spell fizzles. She'd be as useless on a battlefield as teats on a tomcat. That's why your traditional wizard spends her time in a tall ivory tower or an arcane workshop deep underground: they need to sequester themselves from all distractions."

"Battle magic is different. It isn't necessarily a different school of magic; it's more of a different philosophy towards magic. Battle mages sacrifice efficiency and subtlety for the sake of speed and precision. Battle mages devote themselves fastidiously to their spells, until the motions and syllables are so ingrained that they become second instinct; it gets to the point where some can cast reflexively, responding to a threat before they're even consciously aware of it. That's how seamlessly a _Khuul'shaarat _blends sword-work and sorcery. The goal is to become like the ancient founder of the order, Khoraak the Spell-bane, who, according to legend, was taking an afternoon nap underneath the boughs of a cedar tree in the forests of Khel Sa'aat when he deflected the poison tipped quarrel of a _Shuuruk_-clan assassin by casting a simple shielding spell _while he slept, _before rousing and dispatching the would-be killer with a fire spell and _an empty scabbard_."

They were staring at her, all of them but Chandra, who was still slowly and carefully creeping up the cliff. Neana realized that she had been carried away: she couldn't recall the last time she'd spoken so long on a single subject. "Or so I was taught." She coughed. "Anyway, there's a price to pay for that level of speed: willpower. Raw mental effort. The less time you put into crafting and preparing the guiding_ logos_ of a spell, the less stable it is. Spells cast with a single thought rarely last longer than that same thought: good for lobbing bolts of lightning, bad for any kind of sustained effort. A battle-mage has to expend considerably more effort in sustaining her spells from moment to moment than a—"

The huge flying lizard chose that moment to swoop in and seize Chandra, plucking her right off the face of the wall.

To be continued.


	18. Appendix 1

Super Special Author's Note:

I recently received a request: someone suggested that I post the DND character statistics for the characters in this story, so that they can use them in their campaign. It's actually something that I've been meaning to do for a long time, but that I just never got around to doing, for a very simple reason: I've never actually bothered to give them stats.

You see, originally Sam, Neana, Razze, and the rest were player characters and non-player characters in a science fiction campaign, where they served as fighter pilots aboard a starship. When that game ended, I decided to start up an Eberron campaign, and set it in the Lhazaar Principalities. I was half-way through writing my campaign notes when I decided that the players would enjoy it if their characters in the old game made cameo appearances in the new campaign. I made a few quick notes, assigned them generic roles and classes based on their personalities, and decided to make them ex-Cyran officers turned privateers. They were, at most, going to appear for one or two sessions and then go away.

Well, the Eberron campaign never got off the ground due partly to my laziness but mostly to several players moving to another state. The notes sat on my hard drive for many months, gathering dust. Then one day I noticed them, re-read them, and it occurred to me that the account of how a ship full of Cyrans survived the death of their country would make a pretty good story. Besides, I liked the characters, and knew them well, and have loved the Eberron setting since the first time I picked the book up.

So I wrote it down. And then a sequel suggested itself, so I started writing that. And while I was writing that, an idea for a THIRD story occurred to me, and now I have more ideas for stories than I have time to write.

Which is all a very longwinded way of saying that while I know the characters pretty well, I never NEEDED their stats. Because of this, they have only vague character outlines, some of which aren't strictly rules-legal. Neana, for instance, was always a Duskblade, but I eventually realized that she would have to be 11th level to support all the spells that I had her casting. Also, Captain Klein's alignment conflicts with his class choices. But if you're willing to overlook that, here are the character notes. Where I have referenced a class, feat, or ability that is not found in the Core DND books or in the Eberron Campaign Setting, I have noted the book in which you can find it.

**Levels:** In my original notes, the named officers of the Dire Kitten and the Mother Bear were somewhere between 4th and 8th level, with the captains Asheel Klein and Alexia ir'Arth being the highest and Kiana, the Bear's chaplain and quartermaster, being the lowest. Sam, Razze, and Neana were all seventh level. Non-player characters rarely rise to very high levels in Eberron, and 8th level was about as high as I could plausibly make any of them. After all, the High Prince of Lhazaar is only 9th level!

In the stories, since they are protagonists, I would allow them a bit more leeway. I would put Sam and Razze at about sixth or seventh level. The Captains are about eighth or ninth level. Neana may be as high as ninth or tenth level, by the end of the fight in the Thieves Guild.

Regardless, they're all between 5th and 10th level, in terms of ability. Less than 5th level and they wouldn't have access to the spells and abilities that make them interesting. Higher than 10th level, and they'd be too big to feature in the pulpy kinds of stories that I like. I see them as hardened veterans: they have survived not only the war to end all wars, but a minor apocalypse, and each of them could hold their own against several regular soldiers, although not without being wounded. On the other hand, they're not all-powerful: they couldn't take on an army (or even the Newthrone city militia), or overthrow a government, and their spellcasting abilities are fairly modest. They're tough, but not super-heroic.

**Items**: I figure that the Cyran military, cozy as it is with House Cannith, would provide modestly powerful magic items to its officers and veterans. Everyone of Lieutenant rank or above probably merits at least a +1 weapon and/or armor. A few characters have specific items: Sam has a +1 flaming composite longbow, which was a particular reward for her heroic actions when she served as a border ranger before transferring to the navy. Razze 's rapier is magical, but his dagger is not. Captain Klein has an adamantine sword (either a bastard sword or a long sword) with an ebony handle, which was surrendered to him by an honorable enemy. Neana has two items: _Sharneth_, which is a +1 keen falchion that Neana, at her own personal expense, enchanted with the Elf-bane property, and her armor, which is a mithral breastplate with the properties of an embedded Eternal Wand of Swift Ready. The spell Swift Ready can be found in Forge of War: it allows her to summon the armor to her person as a swift action.

**Lieutenant Neana Tacey**: Neana is a female half-elf. Her alignment is Neutral Evil, though Sam's continued influence has caused her to shift towards True Neutral. She is a Duskblade (Player's Handbook 2) of about 7th to 9th level. She has many ranks in Intimidate, Spellcraft, Swim, and Jump, and some ranks in Knowledge (Arcana), Profession (Sailor), and Balance. She has cast the following spells in her stories: Blade of blood, Jump, Shocking Grasp, True Strike, Lesser Deflect, Swift Fly, Ghoul's Touch, Dimensional Hop, Vampiric Touch, and Halt. She probably has the Power Attack feat, which she loves to use in conjunction with the True Strike spell and her Quick Cast ability. She is strong and intelligent, but not very personable.

NOTE: for a lower-level or more rules-legal version of Neana, I recommend losing the Halt and Vampiric Touch spells and instead describe her Shocking Grasp spell as if her hand were enveloped in pulsing black electricity, just as I describe her Swift Fly spell as if she were summoning spectral wings.

**Lieutenant Sam**: Sam is a female changeling. Her alignment is Chaotic Good, though constant exposure to both the perils of war and Neana have shifted her alignment strongly towards Chaotic Neutral. She has at least one level in Rogue, and at least four levels in Ranger (she originally had an animal companion). She probably has the Able Learner feat from Races of Destiny, which causes all her skills to cost one point, whether they're class skills or not. Sam dabbles in many areas, having both good social skills, decent thievery skills, and fair wilderness survival skills. Her first Favored Enemy choice would be Humans; not out of enmity, but simply because, as a soldier, they're the race she fights most often. She is dexterous and charismatic, but physically frail.

**Lieutenant Razze Nanteel**: Razze is a male half-elf. He is either Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Good. He has at least three levels of Swashbuckler (Complete Warrior) and probably at least two of Fighter. He strongly favors using the Combat Expertise feat, and enjoys using combat maneuvers like Disarm or Trip, and is skilled at fighting on a heaving ship, having many ranks in Tumble and Balance. He also has Improved Unarmed Strike. Razze is dexterous, and smarter than he sometimes seems.

**Lieutenant Chandrasitari**: Chandra is a female kalashtar. Her alignment is Lawful Neutral. She is a psion, probably of the Telepath discipline. She is at least one level lower than Sam and Razze. She has a great number of knowledge skills at her command, often more than she lets on. Sometimes I screw her name up, but –tari is the proper suffix to her name, and indicates her line of descent from a particular Quori spirit.

**Captain Asheel Klein**: Captain Klein is a male human. He is probably Lawful Good, although he prefers to appear a grim and acerbic Lawful Neutral. He has at least one level in either Fighter or Warrior (or you might use Marshal, if you have the Miniature's Handbook) to represent his skill with weapons and heavy armor, but his other levels are mostly Bard. He is extraordinarily charismatic, and he often projects an aura of authority and martial power despite the fact that he is really only a middling combatant. He has many ranks in Perform (Oratory) which he uses to shout commands and tactics in the heat of battle and to inspire his men. While he technically knows several utilitarian spells, he rarely casts them. He heavily favors feats and abilities, like Song of the Heart, that improve his Bardic inspirations.

**Captain Alexa ir'Arth**: Alexia is a female human. She is strongly Neutral Good. She has about seven levels in the Cleric class, since she knows the 4th level spell Death Ward, and maybe one or two levels in the Aristocrat class. She worships the Silver Flame. She is from a very lesser line of the Cyran nobility.

**Chaplain Kiana Vann**: Kiana is a female human (although one of her parents was a half-elf). She is Neutral Good. She is a Favored Soul (from Complete Divine, although if you don't have that book you can just make her a Cleric), although not a very powerful one: she is the lowest level officer in either ship. She is extraordinarily beautiful (and charismatic). She worships the Sovereign Host, and especially favors the goddess Arawai. As a Chaplain, she technically occupies a position slightly outside the chain of command, though she is usually accorded the respect due to a very junior officer.

**Ensign Moira Dehro**: Moira is a female shifter (probably either a Dreamsight shifter or a Longstride shifter). She is Lawful Good. She has levels in the Monk class, and possibly Expert as well: though she detests violence, she defends herself with powerful unarmed strikes, choosing to do subdual damage. Formerly the Dire Kitten's quartermaster, she was promoted to Ensign following the Day of Mourning, and given the duties of the deceased ship's boson. She is extremely shy (low Charisma), which makes her a terrible boson, but she is extremely dedicated to her job (high Wisdom), which makes her an excellent quartermaster. She is also physically very strong.

**Ensign Tarn, of Clan Mar'si:** Tarn is a male half-orc. He is Chaotic Neutral. Most of his levels are in the Barbarian class, though he is of no more than 6th level. He has an excellent Charisma for a half-Orc, and uses Intimidate to bully his men into action.

These are all just suggestions, of course. They're how I envision the characters, more or less. Some of the stats are merely kludges to try and fit a difficult concept into the rules: Captain Klein, for instance, is only a Bard because there isn't a very good Tactician class in DND. In the upcoming 4h edition, he would probably be an excellent example of a Warlord. Likewise, Neana is a Duskblade because that is the best Fighter/Wizard combination that I could find: I really picture her as being more wizardly than the class allows me, which is why she has used many more spells in the stories than her levels would support.

Also, allow me to take a moment to thank everyone who reads these stories, and especially to the people who took the time to review them. While I may not have always responded to your feedback, it was always greatly appreciated. I only write these for fun, but it's nice to know someone else enjoys them.

PS: try to guess which of the characters I originally played in the old campaign. Here's a hint: it wasn't Neana.


	19. Appendix 2: 4e Characters REVISED

Now that the 4e Eberron book has come out, here are the accurate, official 4e stats for the party. Made with the Character Creator.

**

* * *

  
**

**Neana Tacey  
**

As an Assault Swordmage, Neana is both heavily armored and highly mobile. Her Aegis power allows her to deliver devastating retribution anywhere on the battlefield. Zephyr of the Burning Sands lets her fly shorts distances, and she can use Scorching Burst as an at will attack to hit opponents beyond her reach. Neana has also recently multiclassed to Avenger, representing her special and not entirely wholesome connection with her goddess.

Evil Half-Elf Swordmage 13

Paragon: Sword of Assault

Swordmage Aegis: Aegis of Assault

Background: Mist-Touched (+2 to Intimidate)

Str 18, Con 15, Dex 11, Int 20, Wis 13, Cha 11.

AC: 29 Fort: 23 Reflex: 24 Will: 22

HP: 102 Surges: 10 Surge Value: 25

TRAINED SKILLS

Arcana +16, Intimidate +13, Insight +14, Athletics +15, Religion +16

UNTRAINED SKILLS

Acrobatics +6, Bluff +6, Diplomacy +8, Dungeoneering +7, Endurance +8, Heal +7, History +11, Nature +7, Perception +7, Stealth +6, Streetwise +6, Thievery +6

FEATS

Level 1: Weapon Focus (Heavy Blade)

Level 2: Armor Proficiency (Chainmail)

Level 4: Armor Proficiency (Scale)

Level 6: Skill Training (Religion) (retrained to Disciple of Divine Wrath at Level 13)

Level 8: Ritual Caster

Level 10: Bloodthirsty Mien

Level 11: Versatile Master

Level 12: Vigorous Assault

POWERS

Dilettante: Scorching Burst

Swordmage at-will 1: Luring Strike

Swordmage at-will 1: Greenflame Blade

Swordmage encounter 1: Flame Cyclone

Swordmage daily 1: Burning Blade

Swordmage utility 2: Eldritch Speed

Swordmage encounter 3: Dual Lightning Strike

Swordmage daily 5: Dimensional Bond

Swordmage utility 6: Zephyr of the Barren Sands

Swordmage encounter 7: Shatterblade

Swordmage daily 9: Be Gone

Swordmage utility 10: Dimensional Dodge

Swordmage encounter 13: Acid Burst Blade (replaces Flame Cyclone)

Paragon: Spell Strike, Aegis Reserve

Multiclass: Oath of Enmity

ITEMS

Adventurer's Kit, Summoned Wyvernscale Armor +3, Feyslaughter Falchion +3, Brooch of Shielding +3

RITUALS

Amanuensis, Explorer's Fire, Gentle Repose, Fastidiousness, Make Whole, Purify Water, Secret Page, Silence, Wizard's Curtain, Pyrotechnics, Water Walk, Magic Circle, Preserve Flame, Tiny Lanterns

* * *

**Sam**

Sam is a mixture of Ranger and Rogue. Most of her feats have been spent on skill training; Sam is an expert at both wilderness and urban survival, and her Jack of All Trades feat lets her fake her way through what little she doesn't know. While not as dedicated to combat as Razze or Neana, Sam's ranger abilities make her a deadly long, mediu8m, or even close range threat.

Unaligned Changeling Ranger 12

Paragon: Battlefield Archer

Fighting Style: Archer Fighting Style

Background: Natural Chameleon (Bluff class skill)

Str 11, Con 9, Dex 22, Int 14, Wis 16, Cha 17.

AC: 28 Fort: 21 Reflex: 26 Will: 23

HP: 76 Surges: 5 Surge Value: 19

TRAINED SKILLS

Nature +14, Perception +14, Bluff +16, Stealth +19, Acrobatics +16, Thievery +17, Streetwise +14, Diplomacy +14, Insight +16

UNTRAINED SKILLS

Arcana +10, Dungeoneering +11, Endurance +6, Heal +11, History +10, Intimidate +11, Religion +10, Athletics +10

FEATS

Level 1: Jack of All Trades

Level 2: Sneak of Shadows

Level 4: Skill Training (Streetwise)

Level 6: Skill Training (Diplomacy)

Level 8: Skill Training (Insight)

Level 10: Linguist

Level 11: Distant Advantage

Level 12: Weapon Focus (Bow)

POWERS

Ranger at-will 1: Nimble Strike

Ranger at-will 1: Twin Strike

Ranger encounter 1: Two-Fanged Strike

Ranger daily 1: Split the Tree

Ranger utility 2: Crucial Advice

Ranger encounter 3: Thundertusk Boar Strike

Ranger daily 5: Close-Combat Shot

Ranger utility 6: Weave Through the Fray

Ranger encounter 7: Biting Volley

Ranger daily 9: Spray of Arrows

Ranger utility 10: Expeditious Stride

Battlefield Archer: Archer's Glory, Combined Fire

ITEMS

Hat of Disguise , Absence Amulet +3, Sylvan Earthhide Armor +3, Flameburst Longbow +3, Burglar's Gloves , Distance Dagger +1, assorted daggers, Bag of Holding

* * *

**Razze Nanteel**

As a Rakish Swashbuckler, Razze is as quick as he is handsome. With Sly Flourish he can add his Charisma bonus to damage on attacks, and Agile Athelete lets him roll twice for all Acrobatics and Athletics checks. Knockout and Pommel Smash represent his down and dirty fighting style; Razze is as likely to throw a sucker punch as he is to stab you in the kidney.

Good Half-Elf Rogue 12

Paragon: Rakish Swashbuckler

Rogue Tactics: Artful Dodger

Background: Mist-Touched (Endurance class skill)

Str 11, Con 15, Dex 20, Int 13, Wis 9, Cha 20.

AC: 27 Fort: 21 Reflex: 28 Will: 24

HP: 82 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 20

TRAINED SKILLS

Stealth +16, Thievery +16, Endurance +13, Bluff +16, Acrobatics +16, Athletics +11

UNTRAINED SKILLS

Arcana +7, Diplomacy +13, Dungeoneering +5, Heal +5, History +7, Insight +7, Intimidate +11, Nature +5, Perception +5, Religion +7, Streetwise +11

FEATS

Level 1: Weapon Proficiency (Rapier)

Level 2: Two-Weapon Fighting

Level 4: Two-Weapon Defense

Level 6: Weapon Focus (Light Blade)

Level 8: Dirty Fighting

Level 10: Nimble Blade

Level 11: Two-Weapon Opening

Level 12: Agile Athlete

POWERS

Dilettante: Vicious Mockery

Rogue at-will 1: Riposte Strike

Rogue at-will 1: Sly Flourish

Rogue encounter 1: Positioning Strike

Rogue daily 1: Pommel Smash

Rogue utility 2: Hop up

Rogue encounter 3: Flamboyant Strike

Rogue daily 5: Clever Riposte

Rogue utility 6: Nimble Climb

Rogue encounter 7: Circling Predator

Rogue daily 9: Knockout

Rogue utility 10: Combat Tumbleset

Paragon: Abashing Stab, Mocking Footwork

ITEMS

Adventurer's Kit, Veteran's Drowmesh armor+3, Graceful Rapier +3, Opportunistic Dagger +2, Amulet of Protection +3

* * *

**Chandrasitari**

Betrayal is Chandra's favorite combat maneuver, allowing her to trick an enemy into attacking one of its allies. With Bastion of Mental Clarity, Intellect Fortress, and Mind over Flesh, Chandra is nearly immune to daze, stun, or dominating effects. Her Bard multiclass feats represent both her dedication to scholarly training and her limited but effective healing abilities.

Unaligned Kalashtar Psion 10

Discipline Focus: Telepathy Focus

Kalashtar: Arcana Bonus

Background: Vigilant (+2 to Insight)

Str 10, Con 10, Dex 8, Int 20, Wis 16, Cha 17.

AC: 23 Fort: 17 Reflex: 22 Will: 23

HP: 58 Surges: 6 Surge Value: 14

TRAINED SKILLS

Diplomacy +14, History +17, Arcana +19, Insight +17, Heal +13, Religion +17

UNTRAINED SKILLS

Acrobatics +4, Bluff +9, Dungeoneering +10, Endurance +5, Intimidate +8, Nature +10, Perception +8, Stealth +4, Streetwise +10, Thievery +4, Athletics +5

FEATS

Psion: Ritual Caster

Level 1: Group Mindlink

Level 2: Quori Shield

Level 4: Precise Mind

Level 6: Bardic Dilettante

Level 8: Bardic Knowledge

Level 10: Skill Training (Religion)

POWERS

Psion at-will 1: Mind Thrust

Psion at-will 1: Dishearten

Psion daily 1: Ravening Thought

Psion utility 2: Intellect Fortress

Psion at-will 3: Betrayal

Psion daily 5: Crisis of Identity

Psion utility 6: Mind Shadow

Psion at-will 7: Mind Break (replaces Mind Thrust)

Psion daily 9: Mind Blast

Psion utility 10: Mind over Flesh

ITEMS

Adventurer's Kit, Ritual Book, Orb of Sudden Insanity +3, Magic Githweave Armor +3, Cloak of Distortion +2, Gem of Colloquy (heroic tier)

RITUALS

Amanuensis, Arcane Mark, Wizard's Curtain, Purify Water, Comprehend Language, Water Walk, Summon Winds, Eavesdropper's Foil, Magic Circle, Discern Lies, Water Breathing, Sending


	20. 15: Wherin there are thrilling heroics

Later they would shamefacedly tell each other that they couldn't have seen it coming. Despite the fact that the creature was the size of a horse – despite being covered in scales the color of tarnished copper and possessing a wingspan fully seven yards across – it caught them completely unawares.

The wyvern was a predator, the most dangerous living creature in its stretch of the Qbarran jungle. With eyes that were the envy of any eagle, it spotted them from miles away, as tiny specks of black dotting the cliff face. It circled slowly, because it was old, and had learned caution. It watched their slow ascent with great care as it instinctively chose the weakest among them for its initial prey. Instead of swooping in directly, approached them the long, roundabout way; flying parallel to the long wall, wings drawn in tight, accelerating, mere handbreadths away from the sheer cliff face. In the great shadow of the landsdrop, they could not have seen its coming until it was almost upon them.

The five of them knew none of this. This is all they saw: there was a green blur, the creaking sound of huge, taut wings, and a rattle of dislodged pebbles, and Chandra was gone.

Time seemed to slow as their adrenaline surged. They reacted instantly. Pointlessly. Sam shrieked as the swirling winds of the monster's wake threatened to tear her from the face of the cliff. The great blast of air whipped her clothes, lashed her hair, pulled the scream from her mouth, and flung it away. Still, her instinct proved the most useful of all of them: she turned reflexively, flicking her hand at the back of the fleeing monster and Neana saw a flash of tumbling silver as a dagger flew. It never even came close. Razze drew both his long grey rapier and his black dagger in an eye-blink, but he could do nothing more than stare impotently at the winged creature, which was already a good dozen spans away and accelerating. Victor didn't even bother to reach for a weapon. This was out of his league, and he knew it. Instead he turned to look at her. His face was calm and nearly expressionless, but Neana thought she could read the thought in his knowing amber eyes.

"_Well, Miss Wizard? What are you going to do about it?"_

Neana didn't stop to think, she just stepped out into empty space.

As gravity laid its greedy hands on her, she had enough time to make a single decision: should she summon her armor, or not? Lately she had taken to storing her armor in a pouch on Sam's belt; a special, magical pouch that seemed much larger on the inside than the outside, which Sam had mysteriously acquired in the aftermath of their robbing the Newthrone Thieves' Guild. Because she had taken time this morning to activate certain spells laid upon the armor, Neana could summon it directly to her person in an instant, but that might be one instant too many: she couldn't summon both her armor and her wings with the same breath. She had to choose between the fastest possible pursuit and her own personal safety. Even as these thoughts were sliding through her head, and just as the bottom began to drop out of her stomach, she was decided.

"_Averis_." She whispered the word, which slipped beautifully through her grating throat, and her wings unfurled. Huge and black and transparent, with all the substance of a shadow, they nevertheless grew taut as they beat the air. Feathered, translucent muscles bulged and flexed at her shoulder blades, dark pinions clawed at the sky, and she was flying. Or rather, she was still falling, albeit more gracefully: despite her wings, she was pointed like an arrow straight down, and the landsdrop was a grey blur beneath her as she dropped face-first towards the earth far below. That was easily fixed. With a flick, a twist, and a carefree laugh – flying was one of the only true and unalloyed joys in her life – she turned a doomsday plunge into a soaring rise and began to give chase to the reptilian beast that had seized the kalashtar.

Only now that she was airborne did Neana have the time to get a really good look at the beast, and the sight of it nearly stopped her heart, because at first she took it to be a dragon. So great was her shock that she forgot to beat her wings and nearly plunged from the sky. Only after much squinting and peering did she eventually realize that she must be mistaken. It was dragon-_shaped_, yes, with scaly skin, a crested, reptilian head, and wide leathery wings, but it was no true dragon. Of course, Neana had never actually seen a dragon – perhaps no one alive had, since any ships that sailed too close to the mysterious continent where the immortal dragons dwelt were never heard from again – but she had seen images of the magnificent creatures. Dragons were a popular subject at the _Academe Arcanix_ in Metrol, because it was said that they were creatures of pure arcane power, the true children of Siberys, who had deigned to teach the laws of magic to the lesser races in times long forgotten. Dragons were beautiful, powerful, majestic, awe-inspiring creatures; to be in the mere presence of a dragon was to be instantly cowed by their aura of menace and glory.

This thing was just a huge flying lizard.

Neana saw that the long, spiny tail was tipped with a barbed stinger, and she made the connection: a wyvern. A lesser off-shoot of the dragon family, more closely related to the crude, wingless drake than any true dragon. They made nests in the dark forests of western Aundair, preying on flocks of sheep, or, occasionally, shepherds. Some decadent nobles in the floating city of Sharn, she had heard, had even tamed wyverns for use as mounts. They weren't as fast as either griffins or dragonhawks, but being big, brutish things they could carry much heavier loads.

They were no smarter than dogs, really, and not much more dangerous. She could kill it easily.

Neana told herself these lies because she was beginning to get worried: her second and third thoughts had finally caught up with her. She was alone, a hundred feet in the air, and beyond the reach of her allies. If she made a mistake, she would almost certainly die. A less hateful person would have been terrified; Neana took her budding fears and fed them, one by one, into the fire at her core. She drew _Sharneth_ and gripped the long, curved blade in both hands. She got angry.

"Averis." She murmered in time with the beating of her wings. "Averis. Averis. Averis."

Thus began one of the strangest pursuits in the ancient history of aerial combat on Eberron. The wyvern was easily her match for speed, she knew, as well as larger, stronger, better armored, and possessed of far greater endurance. It had been born, quite literally, to fly. Neana, on the other hand, had the aerodynamic properties of a sack of flour. Her magic helped her overcome this, but her flight spell was pure battle magic; the wings it manifested were an extension of her raw personal will. It had never been intended for this sort of sustained chase. She was having to refocus her thoughts from moment to moment, pushing more and more mental energy into the continuous circuit of the spell to keep it going. She knew she had only a few minutes of flight in her; if the pursuit lasted longer than that, she would either have to either make a landing on the upper reaches of the cliff, or crash and die.

Neana possessed only one advantage over the huge beast; the wyvern didn't know that it was being followed. It flew slowly, even lazily, maintaining its glide with only the occasional beat of its huge leathery wings. If she could catch up to it before it noticed her, she had a chance: if not, she would have to rely on Chandrasitari to slow the monster down. That was the slim hope that sustained Neana: that Chandra would be able to aid her in the coming battle. Neana wasn't clear how mental magics worked, but she respected their power. The kalashtar mind-witch might even now be locked in a titanic mental struggle with the creature, to fog its mind or gain control of its body.

It took an enormous mental toll on Neana, but she gradually closed the gap between herself and the wyvern. In less than a minute, only thirty yards separated her and the tip of its barbed tail. Her shadow wings made no sound as they beat the damp jungle air. The jungle rolled by beneath her. When she glanced back, Sam and the others were no more than tiny specks clinging to the broad cliff wall. She bowed her head, muttered "Averis," and poured on the speed.

The wyvern, for its part, flapped along carelessly, almost contemptuously.

From this distance, Neana could see Chandra, and the sight did her heart no good. The kalashtar hung limp in the monster's scaly claws, her limbs slack, her eyes bulging. The kalashtar's skin, normally dark bronze in hue, was sickly pale and seemed to glisten with sweat. For a moment, Neana became so convinced that the other woman was dead that she forgot to breathe. A wyvern's sting, she knew, was deadly poison; wyvern venom was highly prized both in the black markets of Sharn and Metrol and among the less scrupulous scions of the Dragonmarked Houses. A thin coating on a blade could kill in moments, and if dried and added to certain other subtle humours it formed a powerful and lethal narcotic called Last Gasp. If Chandra had been poisoned, there was nothing Neana could do for her: Victor, with his knowledge of local herbs, might be able to do something, but Neana knew that her flight spell would never last long enough to carry Chandra back to him.

"_Averis!_" she spat between clenched teeth. If necessary, she would avenge Chandra's death.

Another full minute passed, and Neana grew desperate. It was hard to think. Maintaining the spell required little physical effort on her part – a whispered word, a casual flick of the wrist – but it took a tremendous mental toll. She was essentially casting and recasting the same spell from moment to moment; her mind traced and retraced the same rigid, unthinking patterns while she gathered up every scrap of willpower she could find within herself and fed it into the magic. It was as if a concert violinist had memorized a certain concerto, had played it, and then was forced to give encore after encore, for hours on end, making sure each performance was note-perfect. Failure in any aspect of the spell's intricate casting would cause her to plummet to her doom. She had already burned through more recitations of this single spell than she had thought possible. The well, such as it was, was nearly dry. Already she was having trouble piecing together coherent thoughts, as more and more of her mental energies were devoted simply to flying.

"_Averi_s…"

The light seemed to grow dimmer. She had tunnel vision now, seeing nothing but the object of her pursuit, and hearing nothing but her own labored whispers. She felt drunk. Her mind was foggy. And the wyvern didn't seem any closer than it had a dozen heartbeats ago. She tried to calculate the distance… and couldn't. Math was too hard. She guessed that she was failing. She tasted desperation in the back of her throat; a galling, acrid tang.

When she ran out of willpower, she started using her anger. "_Averis!"_ she shouted, or as much of a shout as her slit throat could manage, and she had the satisfaction of seeing the wyvern's huge head whip back on its serpentine neck to stare at her. In its surprise it drew its wings in, close to its body. Its flight slowed, just for a heartbeat, and she knew that she had it. She beat her ephemeral wings and rose, putting herself above and behind the beast, and raised her hand, fingers extended. "_Azerim_," she called, and lines of fire connected her fingers and the creature's leather wings.

The wyvern shrieked, to Neana's immense and feral joy. It squealed. It beat its wings and flailed in futile pain, and in that one instant of confusion she gained more ground than she had in the entire pursuit. It whirled to face her – a cloud of angry wings and claws and tail – and Neana hurled herself straight into the beast.

Neana wasn't much good at aerial combat. It wasn't something you got a lot of practice in on a ship of the Royal Navy. Her first attack, a plunging dive with _Sharneth_ held straight out before her like a jousting lance, missed completely. Neana cursed her mistake. She flew straight past the huge beast, banked, and described a short, vicious arc that put her on another collision course. This time the wyvern met her attack with a lash of its whip-like tail. She dodged the barbed stinger – a lethally curved blade as long as her arm – by inches, but the segmented bulk of the wyvern's tail smacked into her and tossed her aside. It was like being struck in the gut by a sledgehammer. The blow sent Neana into a tumbling spin towards the thick canopy of trees two hundred feet below.

She didn't fallen more than a dozen feet before she corrected her dive and pivoted; in mere moments she had sprung up behind the wyvern. Learning from her previous mistake, she didn't grip her sword like a lance but held _Sharneth_ out in the loose, sure grip of a cavalry saber, and strafed the beast. As blade met flesh, instead of swinging the sword, she let her body's own natural momentum power her cut. It worked perfectly. She scored the wyvern's back and left a long, clean gash through the powerful flight muscles around its wings. Blood and broken scales scattered against the sky like droplets of rain, and added to the outpourings of the Bleeding Wall. The wyvern whirled, and tried to buffet her with its wings, but Neana had taken the creature's measure now: she darted behind it, and gave it another shallow cut. Because her wings were only the pure and ephemeral outward manifestations of a complex magical process, they granted her far more agility than any flesh and blood flying creature of her size could manage. She could dodge and dart and pirouette like a humming bird or – and just comparing herself to this put Neana's teeth on edge – like a pixie. The wyvern, by contrast, was five times her size, with a wingspan the size of a house; for such a creature, simply treading the air was a difficult undertaking.

The wyvern whirled. She had wounded it, not mortally, but enough to hurt. It swatted at her like a man might swat at a wasp, and with about as much success. This tiny pest was too fast, and it knew enough to avoid the wyvern's stinger. Worst of all, both the creature's clawed hind limbs were employed in holding Chandrasitari, and couldn't be used as weapons.

Neana plunged her falchion into the wyvern's muscled flank and grinned as the blade bit deep. She gave _Sharneth_ a firm twist as she pulled it out, and the blood flowed in a most gratifying manner. The wyvern's tail lashed out again, and again she zipped straight upwards, easily dodging the clumsy swipe. She was still exhausted, but now a red fog of bloodlust filled her mind. She could do this all day!

Neana became so caught up in her deadly dance that she forgot to whisper "_Averis_."

She did not see her wings flicker and fade, but she sensed their passing. She was filled with a sense of loss and diminishment, as of great and terrible energies expended. It felt oddly post-coital. Her upward momentum waned, ceased, and she began to fall. Neana fumbled desperately to pick up the pieces of her spell, to find the edge of the mental pattern and begin tracing inwards, but the details escaped her. In spite of her sudden jolt of terror, she also felt a dull and loathsome weariness. Even her anger, that great fount of rage that was the core of her being, was no longer enough to sustain her. Even as she began to panic, she had to stifle a yawn. Meanwhile Gravity, that patient bitch, had its claws in her again. With the hand that wasn't gripping her sword – she never even thought of dropping _Sharneth_ – she scrabbled uselessly at the wyvern's smooth, scaly back as she fell past it. Neana had a brief moment of hope as her finger's found some resistance, and then her hand was plunged to the wrist into a hot, slick, throbbing wetness. She had grasped the wyvern by the edge of one of the deep gashes she had put in its hide.

The creature shrieked in pain, its cries ten time louder and more agonized that anything she had heard before. That terrible sound brought to mind memories of battlefields, and the wailing of lamed horses. Blind with pain and dimly aware of its source, the wyvern shook itself like a dog that's just had a swim. Neana's blood-slicked fingers came free, and she was thrown out into the air.

She fell, and as she began to tumble she had a moment of intense visual clarity. She saw the sky above her, which was as clear and cloudless and blue as sapphire. The same color, as Sam liked to remind her on quiet nights, as her eyes. She saw the cliff below her, and she realized that both she and the wyvern had been gaining altitude during the fight, and that they were now thirty feet above the upper slope of the Bleeding Wall; a flat, grassy plateau lay ahead of her, and beyond it another think patch of jungle, and beyond that, another of the broad grey walls that marked a landsdrop. Directly beneath her she saw Q'barra stretching away into the distance, two hundred and more feet below, so that the individual trees and bogs blended together into a vast green carpet that would happily devour her broken bones and leave not so much as a trace that she had ever existed. She saw Chandrasitari looking down at her; the kalashtar's face was ashen, and her eyes were bulging, but she was nevertheless alive and conscious, and as she glimpsed Neana her mouth locked into a horrified wail. And last of all, Neana saw the wyvern's barbed tail lashing down at her like a thunderbolt in one last spiteful attempt to end her life.

Neana reached out and grabbed it, seizing it at the knobby, segmented section just below the enormous stinger. The scales here were black and chitinous and the flesh was covered with hard, slick bristles, like a scorpion's. Despite having all the charm of a poisonous cactus, she pulled it towards her and wrapped her arms around it and hugged it like a lover, with all of her strength. The wyvern roared. Its huge, scaly, and somehow feline features contorted into a very recognizable expression of rage. It sawed its tail wildly from side to side, trying to shake her off. When that failed to work it made its stinger jerk spasmodically, attempting to pierce her flesh. It succeeded in beating at her and once, agonizingly, in smacking her right between her thighs, in that place where no one – man or woman – likes to be smacked, but the point of its barb was curved away from her body, and its poison sprayed harmlessly into the empty air.

Neana did not think: she was at her best when she didn't think. Besides, she was far too tired to think. Instead she reacted to her necessities one at a time, following the inevitable steps of survival. _Sharneth _was of no use to her now – there was no way to wield the long, two-handed blade without losing her grip on the tail – so she cast it aside. It tumbled end over end to land point down, thrust into the turf of the lip of the plateau immediately below her. That was lucky; if she lived through the next ten seconds, she knew where to find her sword. Now that both hands were free, she got a firmer grip on the wyvern's tail. The creature's lashings could no longer bruise her as badly. With the few heartbeats of peace this bought her, she steadied her mind. In place of reason and training, she used raw anger to tamp down her own rising fear. With the few thought processes that remained to her, and with the ragged remains of her scattered brains, she reached back into her oldest memories and patiently went through a simple meditative technique that the ancient sword-master Dorak had taught her long ago. The elderly dwarf had used it to cure hangovers, not to cast spells, but the principle was still sound. Even as the wyvern readied itself to beat her against the cliff wall until it scraped her loose from its tail, Neana felt her equilibrium return. She regained just enough of her inner clarity to let her cast a single spell.

She cast it.

_Flick._

It wasn't much of a teleport; she could only shift something as huge as a wyvern by a handful of yards. It would have been better if she had been able to send the wyvern five hundred feet to its left, into the heart of the mountain. It would also have been nice if she could have sent all three of them to a safer place. But the brief teleport spell served its purpose: when the huge flying lizard disappeared and reappeared fifteen feet above her, it no longer had either Neana or Chandra clinging to it. Instead the two women hung suspended in mid air, two hundred feet above a hungry jungle. Gravity reasserted itself, and Neana thought, _Oh, not this again_. Chandra had just enough time to scream incoherently, and Neana had just enough time to shout "_Averis!_" before the kalashtar fell into her open arms.

It wasn't much of a flight, either. Neana managed two quick wing-beats before the spell fizzled and both of them dropped like stones out of the sky. It was just enough to carry her over the lip of the landsdrop so that when she fell to the ground, it was onto the grassy plateau fifteen feet below her instead of the bottom of the cliff two hundred feet down. Even so, it was a nasty fall. At the last second Neana twisted her body – later she would never be sure whether she had intended to break Chandra's fall with her own body, or selfishly use the kalashtar as a landing cushion – and the two women hit at an angle, rolling end over end in a tangle of bruised limbs, until they came to a stop a few yards from the edge of the cliff.

There was a moment of silence. No one moved.

Neana spat out a mouthful of grass. Her head ached, and her thoughts weren't working prop'ly. Properly. Her mind felt foggy and slow and, not to put too fine a point on it, dead drunk. She was having trouble remembering what had happened to her. She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. A questing hand found something cold and metallic – _Sharneth_ – and she used the blade to lever herself to her feet. Behind her, she heard Chandra moan, and utter something that might have been a curse. Good: where there was obscenity, there was life.

Now, what had she been doing? Why was she lying on the ground in the first place?

A scream split the air, an angry sound that combined the squeal of sheering metal with a predatory rage.

Oh, that's right. The wyvern.

It wasn't hard to spot. It had ended up facing the wrong direction after she teleported it, and, since a ton of wyvern is a difficult thing to steer, was making a slow, deliberate arc as it turned itself around. The beast was a few hundred feet away, far out over the empty jungle, and getting closer every moment. There was no doubt that it was coming straight for her; apparently wyverns were smart enough to hold grudges.

She tried to think, to plan, but her brain wasn't working. The effort made of trying to line up her thoughts made her reel, and she nearly lost her balance and fell. That would have been bad. It was two hundred feet to the ground just now. Neana turned her back and stumbled away from the cliff's edge. Numbly, she tested the edge of her sword's blade on the ball of her thumb, to make sure that the fall hadn't damaged it. A hiss escaped her lips as _Sharneth_ immediately drew blood. She should have known: she'd never needed to polish or sharpen the magical sword once in the decade and more since it had been given to her. Nothing seemed to be able to dull the falchion's taste for bloodletting. Only after she did all these things did she turn to face the beast.

It was getting closer.

Since she couldn't seem to think, she did the next best thing. She got angry.

Szorawai il'Arawai, Daughter of Rape, Queen of Rage and Ruin, patron of madmen and berserkers and poets and lovers: the goddess known as The Fury was worshipped by tens of thousands across the face of Eberron, under many different guises. On the isles of Seren, in the shadow the dragons of Argonnessen, barbaric tribesmen raised totems to her under the name Azferryx, the Blood-Moon, the ancient red dragoness of shame and splendor, and every equinox they carve the hearts from a dozen living victims and cast them on a pyre in her name. In heathen Droaam, dog-faced gnolls worship her as Y'Relloi, the Cackling Bitch, mother of the burning hordes, and her lunatic priests shaved spirals into their fur and sewed venom-tipped adder's fangs into their flesh and dripped prophecies of rabid vengeance from their foam-flecked lips. In courtly Trolanport, stylish gnomish youths dabbled in darkness by worshipping her as the Red Lady, and they tied silken ribbons around their lover's wrists and mixed dream-lily in their evening wine and wrote odes to her poisoned kisses, which bring either love everlasting, or death eternal. In the wilds of the Eldeen Reach, where some of the oldest sects still hold sway, she was the consort to the Traveler and the mother of werewolves: they said that it was the Traveler who mingled the essence of man and wolf, but it was the Fury who settled the curse of the twelve moons into their bones.

Outside the civilized five nations she was worshipped atop crude clay ziggurats and red marble temples and within the human lands she was revered in thousands of clandestine shrines. In the back rooms of inns, in crawl-spaces beneath warehouses, and behind hidden panels in the finest mansions in Khorvaire, the worshippers of the Fury – barroom brawlers, eccentric artists, epicures and aesthetes, maniacs and neurotics – met together to give thanks for, or beg release from, their writhing passions. And despite their strange and disparate natures, they all, every one of them, had this one thing in common: none of them could understand Neana.

She simply did not fit in. Among their ranks, she suck out like a sore thumb. A small, pale, almost mousy looking woman with cold blue eyes, she was no one's idea of a rowdy berserker. She had not the slightest artistic inclination, nor poetic genius, and showed no sign of wishing to carve off a body part simply to please a lover. While attending the blood rites of the Sanguinox, when naked priestesses practiced animal sacrifice and smeared their faces and lips and breasts with blood, Neana brought a book to read. On Wildnight, when even the good worshippers of the Sovereign Host paid homage to the Fury through feasting and dancing and drunken revelry, Neana tended to lock herself in her cabin with a bottle of brandy and drink herself into a sullen sleep. The ritual orgies she avoided altogether. Despite her devout worship of the Goddess of passion, to the casual observer, there seemed to be no passion to her.

But only to the casual observer.

Neana was angry. Rage boiled over in her heart; the kind of rage that could lead a woman to charge the gates of death and demand satisfaction from the gods themselves. It filled her so completely that there was hardly any room for anything else. If she seemed a trifle cold, or distant, it was only because she had been able to save so little of herself from the fire. Another woman might have gone insane, or thrown herself into drink or strong drugs to smother the fires, but not her. She had grown up with the rage from childhood, had let it nurture her through the long, loveless nights in that girl's home, had used it to keep going when she was starving on the streets. She had taken a grip on her anger and honed it, whetted it, into a blade of unsurpassed sharpness. She wielded her passions like masterpiece tools, and found uses for them that no berserker ever could.

She brought her anger up now, and used it to cut away the fog of weariness that threatened to choke her mind. It took her longer than she would have believed possible, and when she thought that she was finally thinking clearly, she found that the wyvern was almost upon her. In the handful of heartbeats left to her, she gathered the tattered edges of her willpower and found that she had just barely enough energy to push out two more quick, rudimentary spells; one sent coils of power coursing through her legs, to aid her movement, and the other sharpened her senses and brought a terrible clarity of focus to her eyes.

In a flash of insight, she divined the beast's weakness.

The wyvern drew closer. Its slow approach gave Neana time to dwell on the monster, to pick out fine details like its burning emerald eyes and its slavering, dripping fangs. She gripped her sword, and prepared to hurl herself forward. For its part, the winged beast had eyes for nothing except Neana. It passed over Chandra's quivering form with a beat of its leathery wings, not even bothering to scoop up its former prey. Dinner was secondary: this was for blood. In the seconds before it attacked, it let out a shriek that nearly burst Neana's eardrums.

It was almost upon her now. She steadied her grip on _Sharneth_ and charged directly into its gaping jaws.

At the last possible moment, she leapt. The spell uncoiled and her feet hit the ground with such force that chunks of sod and grass were thrown in all directions. With all the force of her magic, she launched herself into the wyvern with the inevitability of a rising sun.

Momentum. Momentum, and the wyvern's own instincts, proved to be its undoing. It is in the nature of wyverns to be cautious. Against prey it judges to be easy meat, the wyvern might swoop in, grasp the prey in its claws, and carry it away to be devoured alive in the safety of its lair. Against a more dangerous foe it prefers to employ its barbed stinger: the poison is the safer weapon. It attacks by swooping at the prey and then veering away at the last moment to lash at the unfortunate creature with a whip-crack of its tail. This instinct, distilled from generations of surviving wyverns, was entirely unsuited to attacking a prey with a thirty foot vertical leap. By the time it saw the rising swordswoman, it was already too late. Its mass carried it inevitably forward.

The wyvern drove itself onto _Sharneth _with a far greater force than Neana could have brought to bear. Neana held the sword out away from her, in a downwards cut, and the shock of impact almost pulled the blade from her hands. Her spell had guided the sword's edge to the creature's weak point, where the hard muscles that powered its wings joined the fragile bones of its ribcage. A ton of reptilian flesh hit the edge of that magically reinforced blade like a grown man running full tilt into a length of taut piano wire.

It made a horrible mess.

Neana hit the ground with a shock she felt from her shinbones to her pelvis, jogged a few feet, and turned to find a bloody heap of wyvern. She'd disemboweled it; her sword had severed the wing at the socket and then bit deep into the abdomen. Now flightless, the monster had plummeted to the ground, making a bloody furrow with its passage before smashing against a chunk of Q'barran bedrock. The creature wailed and beat the air with its remaining wing and rolled around in a spreading pool of its own intestines. Its great lungs, that once had powered its mighty wings, were collapsing inside the ruin of its ribcage. When its pain-maddened and already glazing eyes fixed on Neana, she made a rude gesture.

With a certain amount of exultation, she watched it die.

Neana cleaned her sword on a handful of leaves, sheathed it, and went to examine the other woman. "Chandra?" she called out. "I killed it. You can get up now." No response. "Chandra?"

The kalashtar was sprawled in the same spot where Neana had left her. She was no longer quivering, but her skin was still deathly pale and her silk robes were soaked with sweat. Neana pressed a hand to the other woman's throat, and realized belatedly that she didn't know how to feel for a pulse. She searched Chandra's body for some sign of a wound, but discovered nothing except the fact that the amorphous silk robes the mind-witch always wore concealed a surprisingly feminine body.

"Bad thoughts," she muttered. "Stop that."

Chandra still wasn't responding to her words. Not knowing what else to do, Neana peeled back one of Chandra's eyelids. The kalashtar's eye _blazed_; her iris was a blinding circle of violet light. It was like looking into the noon-day sun. Neana gasped and made as if to shield her own eyes. Along with the piercing light, Neana felt her other senses being assaulted. Her ears were filled with a thunderous murmur as of many voices speaking in unison, her nostrils were overflowing with a sharp, acrid stench, and her skin prickled all over as if she had been plunged into freezing waters. A single emotion tore through the clouds of exhaustion that veiled her mind: fear. Pure and abject terror.

Chandra shuddered and drew away from her. When she opened her eyes again, they no longer glowed. The kalashtar, looking every bit as dazed and befuddled as Neana felt, peered out over the cliff and into the expanse of jungle, blanched, crawled away from the edge, and vomited. Then she drew her sweat-soaked robes about her shoulders and trembled.

Neana was astonished. An actual lightning bolt would have left her less thunderstruck. Chandra, for her part, seemed to draw in upon herself. She stared into the plams of her cupped hands. She made no move to speak, or even to acknowledge the outer world existed.

The two women sat, yards apart, in silence. Eventually Neana relaxed. She didn't know what those sudden sensations had been – Mind magic? Some sort of psychic reflex? – but she understood this much.

"With me, it's spiders," she eventually said.

Chandra said nothing. The silence stretched out for so long that Neana had begun to think that she hadn't been heard, before the kalashtar said, "What?"

"Spiders. Can't stand the little things. They disgust me. Filthy insects. Every time I think about all those little, tiny, hairy legs… I get a little bit crazy. I overreact."

Chandra regarded her with something like her old coolness. "Oh?"

"I don't even like to get close enough to spiders to step on them. If I see one, I usually throw something at it, or try to kill it from a distance. Sometimes with magic." Neana debated with herself for a moment before adding, "Once, I set part of my cabin on fire."

"Oh?" This time, Chandra seemed to be right on the edge of smiling.

"Of course, these days I usually let Sam shoo the little monsters away. You know how she is about animals; she hates to see anything die. All heart, her. She says that spiders are useful, that I ought to leave the non-poisonous ones alone, and that there's no point in being frightened of something that can't do me any harm in the first place. Mind you," Neana added, "I know for a fact that she's terrified of bats. And clowns, for some reason. Jesters and fools too." Then, with what was, for her, astonishing gentleness, she asked "How long have you been afraid of heights?"

Chandra said nothing.

"That's why you were so slow in climbing the wall before, wasn't it? You were terrified of falling."

Chandra said nothing.

"Why didn't you say something? I could have flown you up the cliff. You could have kept your eyes closed the entire time."

Chandrasitari visibly shuddered, the vibrations working their way through her entire body, almost like a seizure. "That would have been horrible. There would have been nothing between the ground and myself but phantasmal wings. I know enough about your kind of magic to see that there would have been nothing holding me aloft but simple, mortal willpower. In that case, I would rather rely on my own two hands."

"Ah," Neana said. Put that way, it did sound a bit frightening. Despite herself, Neana was a little impressed with Chandra. The woman was clearly gripped by a powerful phobia, and yet she had, without complaint, just spent half an hour climbing a sheer cliff face. Granted, yes, that was an enormously stupid thing to do, but also very brave.

Another silence stretched out between the two women, and this time it was Chandra who broke it. "You saved my life," she said.

Neana shrugged. "I guess."

"I owe you my life," Chandra said, more firmly this time. She looked Neana straight in the eyes. "Despite our past differences, you risked everything in order to save me. You were injured in the act of protecting me. I do not know how I will ever be able to repay you."

Neana made a hurried, dismissive gesture. "Don't worry about it."

"No, I must find some proper way to express my gratitude," Chandra said earnestly.

This was getting very uncomfortable. She didn't know how to deal with gratitude; she saw so little of it that she wasn't prepared to receive it, and didn't feel as if she had earned it. She hadn't decided to save Chandra out of any personal affection; in fact, she hadn't really decided anything at all. She had only reacted. She wished, just now, that Sam or Razze could be here. They knew how to speak to people. They would have been able to turn Chandra's appreciation aside with a quip or a joke, and then they would find some way to turn the whole affair into a bonding experience, and they'd end up fast friends, or, in Razze's case, possibly a bit more. That's how this type situation worked in books and plays.

Neana only felt embarrassed, and irritation at being embarrassed. "We're crewmates," she said. "Don't worry about it."

"But I—"

"We're _crew_," she repeated, as if that was all there was to say.

Chandra studied her for a moment. There was something very intense about a kalashtar's stare. Neana didn't fell as if her mind was being read, but how could you tell? Finally, Chandra said, "The people on board your ship are very important to you, aren't they? You take your position very seriously."

"I suppose." Neana shrugged. "With Cyre gone, all the people I know in the world fill those two boats." And, because it occurred to her that it was true, she added, "Those ships are all I've got."

Chandra cocked her head to one side, as if weighing these words carefully. When next she spoke, each word came out smoothly and slowly, as if they were being poured and measured. "We spoke last night about the nature of kalashtar, did we not? You asked me about my people?"

Neana hadn't, but she let it pass. "Yes."

"The _kalashtar_…" She pronounced the word in a way that Neana knew she herself could not quite manage, "are a divided people. In a literal sense, we are divided. Most of us is mortal, but part of us is immortal. You would say that we have a divided soul. A shared soul."

Neana was horrified. She must have looked it, because Chandra made comforting motions with her hands. "No, no. It is not like that. We have not sold our souls. We are not like those poor, afflicted demon-possessed folk that the Silver Flamists castigate. We share our souls, in a beautiful process. You see, once, long ago, there were creatures. They came to the land called Adar, in Sarlona, from another world. They came from a place not like this one; a world as far away as the edge of the universe, and as close as a hair's--"

"They were from another plane," Neana said flatly. "I'm a wizard: don't coddle me. I know all about the other planes of existence."

"Ah. Yes." When she wanted to, Chandra could hide her irritation well. Neana had to give her that. "I shall be brief, then. These beings came from another plane, but they could not survive for long in this one. They lacked a physical form, you see. They lacked an anchor to hold them here. So the humans of Adar offered them one."

"They offered up their bodies," Neana said. "Why do I have a feeling that isn't going to be as interesting as it sounds?"

"They offered up their souls," Chandra corrected. "But only a part of them. And each human that was imbued in this way became a kalashtar. And their children became kalashtar. And their children. But each family only shared union with a single spiritual entity, and only in fragmented pieces. Over time they became bloodlines. I, for instance, am of the lineage of Sitari." She stopped, as if she had said all she was going to on the subject.

Neana licked her lips. "Why are you telling me this?"

Chandra blinked. Neana got the feeling that the other woman thought that she had explained herself perfectly clearly. "The lineage of Sitari is passed on from mother to daughter, each one sharing the bond of Sitari. We are each different women, and yet, on a fundamental level, we share similar souls. We have similar memories. If we were capable of dreaming, we would have similar dreams. I suppose you could think of us as a network of sisters. We even share similar fears. It is not the mortal part of me that fears to fall, it is the immortal half. In falling, Sitari is reminded of her fall from her home into this world. It is a nightmare. That is the source of my fear."

That wasn't good enough. "I repeat: why are you telling me this?"

Chandra folded her hands. "I am saying that I too know what it is like to be a part of something larger than myself. A family is not a matter of blood. It is not a matter of choice. There are members of my soul-line that I would cheerfully strangle, if given the means. And yet I would strike down anyone and anything that dared threaten them. Because whether I like it or not, they contain a shard of my being, and I share a piece of theirs."

Neana stared at her. She really stared, turning on the full focus of her icy blue eyes in a manner that made even the most able-bodied of her seamen tremble. It didn't work. Chandra gave back as good as she got. Eventually Neana gave up. She muttered under her breath, "You're saying that we're both Cyrans. Is that about right?"

"In a sense, yes."

"I can't argue that."

More silence.

Neana added, "I still hate you. You know that, don't you?"

"I am aware," Chandra said dryly.

"Good."

Chandra said, "I am not, in myself, overly fond of you either."

"Good. I didn't want this turning into one of those moments where we cry on each other's shoulders, and unburden ourselves, and share in the eternal communion of sisterhood, or any of that shit."

"Duly noted."

"I just couldn't live with the cliché."

"Nor could I."

Neana stood up, and popped the bones in her back. "I'm glad we got that out of the way." She offered Chandra a hand in standing up, which the kalashtar gratefully accepted. "I don't suppose you can contact the others with your…" she tapped her forehead, "abilities, can you?"

"I already did, while you were blathering about the eternal sisterhood. You will be happy to know that they have reached the top of the cliff and are on their way to meet us."

"Good."

Chandra cocked her head to the side, as if listening to voices only she could hear. "Your changeling friend was very insistent in wanting to be assured of your safety," Chandra said. Her tone was calm and even, without the slightest hint of suspicion. It made the points of Neana's ears prick up. "It must be nice to have such a caring companion."

"Yes…"

"You must be eager to affect a reunion."

"Yes. Well!" Neana said, perhaps just a little too quickly and loudly, "It's a good thing you're afraid of heights, because I couldn't fly us back to them if I wanted to. I'm completely tapped for spells. I'm completely devoid of spark or sparkle. I could set myself on fire if I was covered in lamp oil."

"I would imagine flight is a very great effort," Chandra said neutrally. "You look… exhausted."

Neana got the feeling that Chandra only used the word "exhausted" because she was too proud to say "like warmed over shit." "Well, you know how it is," She said vaguely. "When you run out of spells, or whatever it is that mind-witches use. Very tiring, very numbing. It's mentally draining." She yawned. "You know, I have to admit: in all honesty, it feels a bit like being drunk."

"I wouldn't know," Chandra said coolly. "I do not partake of the snare you call alcohol."

"True. I imagine it's hard to sit down at a bar without removing the stick in your ass first."

Chandra arched her eyebrows. "Are you implying that I am uptight? Stiff? Abstentious?"

"Well, you did just you the word 'abstentious'… So, yes."

"Just because I don't drink myself blind and then make eyes at anything in a skirt, unlike some lieutenants I could name…"

And so it was with something like relief that they passed the time until the others found them. The reunion was very nearly joyful. Sam hugged them both. Razze marveled at the heap of dead wyvern. Vicor said nothing, but he did shake her hand; Neana got the impression that she had passed some kind of test, as far as the hobgoblin was concerned. She was too tired to care.

They walked another mile before making camp, to put some distance between themselves and the carcass. As soon as Neana stretched herself out on the, she fell fast asleep. Blessedly, thankfully, she did not dream.


	21. 16: Wherin frogs are boiled

Victor woke them early the next morning; he explained that he wanted to climb the two remaining walls before sundown, a feat that would bring them to the edge of Ka'rhashan by midmorning of the next day. They all agreed, reluctantly.

"Are you sure that the city will still be there?" Neana asked. "Because two days ago you thought it was east of us, and now it's north and to the west."

"I am sure," Victor said, while looking not at all certain. "The land around here is tiered, like a…" He pondered the definitional topography and made vague shapes with his gnarled hands. "Ziggurat? Fancy wedding cake? You know the shape that I mean? Well, Ka'rhashan is on the top tier. If we climb, we can't help but stumble across it."

Two hours later, they were standing in front of another sheer cliff face that stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction. It looked almost exactly the same as the Bleeding Wall, with two exceptions; the stones here were more weathered and rounded, and the water that fell and spattered and poured down the cliff face was clear as crystal.

"This is the Weeping Wall," he said. "Although some just call it the Weep. You see the hand and foot holds carved into the rock here, and here?"

They saw. They climbed.

The way was difficult. The hand-holds on this wall were shallower, and harder to grip. When Razze pointed this out, Victor told him that the wind and the weather were stronger at this altitude, and this had worn away the stone over the centuries. Since humans had come to Q'Barra, the lizardfolk were in no hurry to re-cut the hand-paths that lead to their only city, and the ways had grown treacherous. The third wall, he said, could be downright deadly.

Halfway up the Weep, they found that a shelf of rock had fallen away and taken the hand-holds with it. Victor told them that if they walked along the deep depression the shelf had left for a hundred yards, they would find a new set of hand holds that the Cold Sun tribes had carved into the Weep.

"You may find something else as well," he added, in what Neana considered to be an overly cryptic and annoying tone of voice.

They walked – well, really the crawled, since the empty socket in the side of the Weep was less than four feet high – to the end of the little cavern, and found the hand-holds. They looked to be only a few years old, and provided a much better grip.

"What else were we supposed to find?" Sam asked.

Victor pointed.

"What? I don't see anything."

Victor sighed, and pointed again.

"It's a rock," Neana said flatly.

"No," Sam said, "It's a face…"

And once she'd said it, everyone could see it. It was a face, but just barely. Time and water and wind had smoothed his features to the consistency of melted butter, but it was still possible to make out a broad nose, two sockets for the eyes, and a pair of jagged nubs where the ears should have been. He had a beard as well; in fact, he had two. Water had worn the stone one to the smoothness of a pillar, but strings of ropy lichen had grown to take its place.

"What was he?" Sam wondered.

"He must have been a king," Razze said. "Kings always have beards. Very masculine symbolism."

"You're never going to give up the beard thing, are you?"

"Not a king," Victor said proudly, "but an Emperor."

Neana stared at it doubtfully. "It's not Karrn. Is it Galifar the first? Because I don't remember anything in my history books about Galifar coming to Q'barra…"

Chandra chuckled; a sound like little silver bells. This was such a rare occurrence that they all turned to stare at her. "That's not Galifar," she said. "Look at the ears."

They looked. The ears, Neana noticed, had been very broad and long before the elements had broken them off. "He's a goblin," she said eventually.

"Like me, he was a _ghaal'dar_." Victor said. "What you call a hobgoblin. You stand before the statue of Gan'duur, the Burning Emperor, Cleanser of the Hearthlands, the Eater of Sorrow, fifth supreme ruler of the Dhakaani."

"That's a mouthful," Razze whistled.

"It sounds better in Goblin," Sam whispered. "Very terse language."

Victor ignored them. "These were his lands, once. Before the humans came, before the dwarves came, before the halflings came, the _ghaal'dar_ ruled here. While your ancestors were still tying flint knives to wooden sticks to make spears, the Dhakaani forged an empire of blood and bronze and byeshk out of the mud of Khorvaire. While the elves were cowering behind their spell-shields for fear of dragonfire, we conquered a continent. While the giants of X'endrik were devolving into feral savagery, my people were raising granite monuments to our own glorious might." He clenched a fist. "And it _was_ glorious: from one end of the continent to the other, from sea to sea, one nation ruled for ten thousand years. Your Galifar built an empire that only survived for fifty generations; Dhakaan built one that lived for five hundred."

They stared at him. Victor paid them no notice. He reached out, almost tenderly, and cleared away some of the lichen that covered the statue's cheek. "You cannot imagine it. I cannot imagine it. Ten thousand years of history; ten thousand years of war and conquest, of art and poetry and song; the strength and audacity of it. Look at him! He came here to conquer a jungle. Why? There is nothing here worth conquering. But Gan'durr did it. I think he wanted to prove that he could. The Cold Sun tribes lived in Talenta long ago, did you know that? It is true. The Blackscales lived in the swamps, and the Greenscales lived in the grasslands. But Gan'duur wanted the plains to make farms, so he chased the Greenscales east, over the mountains and into Q'barra. Then he raised a mighty armada, sailed around the cape, and built a towering citadel here, just to keep an eye on the Greenscales. So that they would know that they had been conquered. He raised statues like this all over Q'barra; he wanted them to live forever in the shadow of their defeat."

They stared at him, at the odd little hobgoblin man and his odd little smile. It was the most that he'd ever said to them at one time. Neana had never suspected that there might be so many words hidden in that broad, stocky breast, or such pride. Belatedly, she began to wonder what other secrets might hide behind that fanged mien.

"There was a citadel here, once?" Sam asked, half-stunned. She sounded like she was groping for a fact to anchor herself too. She looked around. "Where?"

Victor sighed. "Two thousand years ago, the earth moved. The citadel of Gan'duur fell off the side of the mountain. Now even the rubble has been swallowed by the jungle."

"That's…," Sam hesitated. Her gift with words failed her. "That's very sad."

_That's life_, Neana almost retorted. _Peoples_ _die, cities fall, and everything falls apart._ But she held her tongue. She of all people knew what it was like to mourn for a past that was lost forever. Two lost pasts now, with Cyre gone. Perhaps that thought occurred to the others as well, because a palpable hush settled over the group. Lost civilizations were getting more common every day.

Chandra coughed discretely into her hand to cover the embarrassing silence. "Shall we go? I believe there is still plenty of cliff left to climb."

There was. There were more ancient ruins as well, although none were as well preserved as the imperial statue. They saw faces worn to unrecognizable smoothness, broken pillars that looked like stalactites and, the crowning achievement, a working length of aqueduct at the very top of the Weeping Wall. In ancient times it must have fed the citadel, but now it fed the open sky. And so it came to pass that Sam and Neana ate the most picturesque lunch of their lives, at the broken edge of the trough of the aqueduct, with their legs dangling out over the edge of infinity. The jungle below them was a carpet of green. The grey cliff face was only dimly visible though a curtain of clinging mists, courtesy of a thousand, thousand waterfalls. Razze and Victor were sharing a small silver flask farther down the channel, and Chandrasitari had prudently decided to eat her skewer of lizard-kabob on solid ground.

Sam trailed slender grey fingers through the stream of water that still poured down the length of the stone trough before spilling out into empty air. Neana watched the spray of silver droplets fall away into the wind and become a curl of trailing mist. It was beautiful.

Sam flicked droplets of water off her fingertips, before using them to speak. "So, dear. How was your day at work?"

Neana smiled softly, and said in finger-talk, "Pretty boring. Nothing much happened. There was a minor flying lizard attack." Finger-talk was a simple, crude language; there was no word for wyvern. "But it was easily taken care of."

Sam clasped her hands to her chest theatrically. "A flying lizard? But weren't you most terribly afraid?"

Neana wiggled her fingers self-deprecatingly. "Not at all, not at all. A perfectly ordinary event. Just another day in the life of Lieutenant Neana Tacey, world-famous dragonslayer."

"My hero!" Sam made as if to swoon, and thought better of it when she almost lost her balance. They both let out what sounded surprisingly like girlish giggles. Razze and Victor glanced at them, with the self-conscious, distrust stares men always give to the laughter of women. Sam marveled. "Well, aren't you in a good mood! I think I can count the number of times I've heard you laugh on my fingers. I don't know if I'd even need both hands."

Neana shrugged. "I killed something very big yesterday. It tends to cheer me up."

"Well," Sam switched to speaking aloud, "that was very brave of you. And selfless. I always thought that you didn't like Chandra, but there you were, diving straight after her like that, without any hesitation... Well, it's good to be proven wrong."

"Oh, you weren't wrong. I hate her."

Sam's smile dimmed. "You don't really mean that."

That earned her a blank look. "Why do you say that? Of course I mean it. I hate most things. Most people too." She considered this intellectually. "I suppose I hate people more than things, on the whole. But I definitely hate Chandra."

Sam looked betrayed. "But she's your shipmate! You used to share a cabin."

"Oh, I know. That's why I saved her. And if it happened again, I'd save her again, just like I would for any of the Kitten's crew, but that doesn't make us friends. She's just crew. Why," she asked sarcastically, "you don't like everyone aboard the Mother Bear, do you?"

"Well…" The question appeared to strike her as odd. "Well, yes. I mean, I like some more than others, but yes. As much as the officer/crew arrangement allows, I'd like to think that I am on friendly relations with all my people. And I hope that they all like me. Captain Klein always says that we should think of the ship as our second family. Although, he's kind of sarcastic about it. You'd understand, if you'd ever met his family."

This thought was so alien that Neana ignored it. "I hate Chandra. She's a sanctimonious bitch who thinks she's better than everyone else. She's a stuck up, icy harridan."

"You, on the other hand, are a little ray of sunshine," Sam said sourly.

Neana glanced up. The changeling's face – a face that nature had intended to be gaunt, alien, and almost featureless – could be astonishingly expressive. It would never be a beautiful face, but it could at least be a lively and animated one. There may have been shapeshifting involved, but Sam could impart vast amounts of nuance and feeling with her thin lips and pearlescent eyes. Right now she was imparting consternation, disapproval, and…

Neana's anger flared. She tried to shout, "Don't pity me! Don't you dare," but the scars on her throat made it come out quiet and breathy and harsh. She loathed sympathy; hated charity. It made her feel small, and weak, and she would never be made that way again. She knew that she was fundamentally broken, but that didn't give other people the right to look down on her. She _hurt_ people who tried to pull that shit with her. She had gotten enough false compassion, enough _patronization_, in her years at the orphanage, and she wasn't about to take any more from the woman she was sleeping with.

Sam gave her an odd, complex look. It was like a hurtful glance, but there were layers and layers underneath that; sympathy and shame and sorrow. She slipped a hand over her face, and where it passed her features had changed. She made herself into someone else. It was a young half-elven woman, with curls of copper hair, mossy green eyes, and rosy, freckled cheeks; if Sam had had a half-elven sister, she would look like this. It was a mostly-pretty face – boyish, and yet possessed of far more femininity than the one Sam had been born with. It was the face Sam had made for her, as an accommodation between Sam's desire to be seen for who she was and Neana's natural inclination to be attracted to members of her own mixed race. When they slipped beneath the covers most nights, this was the face Neana saw, the lips she kissed. They had never discussed it, never even spoken of it, but there it was: it was a sign of the compromise that their relationship represented.

"I've never pitied you," Sam said.

"You look down on me," Neana said sullenly. "Don't bother denying it."

"Only because I'm a foot taller than you," Sam quipped. "Look: can we go back to the part of the conversation where we were laughing?" She asked wistfully. "I don't feel like fighting right now. It's too nice a day for it."

Neana started to say something sharp – and then she didn't. Her anger, which had been building towards an outrageous blow, suddenly evaporated. For the second time today, for reasons she couldn't quite explain, she overrode her own natural resentment and said, "All right." And then, as if she were a different person, she smiled, and went back to watching the stream of falling water paint the sky with clouds. "It _is_ a very fine day."

"What?" Sam was shocked. "You're giving in, just like that? Are you...," she paused, before settling on the most likely explanation. "Are you drunk?"

Neana laughed. She actually _laughed_. "Maybe. I don't know what's come over me. I think it's because I used too much magic yesterday. My brain is still a little addled from arcanic vapors."

"Well… Whatever it is, you should do it more often."

"I'll make a note to try and fight more wyverns. Just let me get my quill and ink."

Water trickled and burbled beside them. Neana thoughtfully bit off the last bite of gamey lizard flesh and tossed aside the twig it had been skewered on. The stick whirled and tumbled away into the empty air.

She said, "I've never hated you, though."

Sam said, "I know."

"Some days, I think I hate everything but you."

"That's… sweet. I think."

More water passed, and more time. Sam grew dozy, and lay down lengthwise along the trough. Over the sound of rushing water, they heard Razze and Victor's conversation grow quite animated.

"I think I was wrong," Neana said eventually.

"Quick, somebody put up a monument!" Sam said. "Maybe a nice marble obelisk, that says: _'On this day, the nineteenth of Dravago, in the nine hundred and ninety fourth year since the founding of Galifar, Neana Tacey admitted she was wrong._'"

"You are so clever," Neana said sarcastically. "What did I ever do to deserve someone who is so clever? No, I'm serious. I think I got it wrong when I tested the area for magic yesterday."

This did not appear to impress Sam very much. She squinted into the sun's glare, and seemed to be counting the number of moons that were still visible. "You said you could only sense very weak magic around here. You said it would be impossible to miss anything that could teleport us while we slept, or rearrange the land, or something."

Neana frowned. "And I was wrong. I think I missed something big. I think this place is like a boiling frog."

"Oh," Sam said. Her eyebrows came together. "What?"

"It's something they make apprentices do in their Basic Anatomic Necromancy classes. Look: frogs have a very weak _animus_. An _animus_ is like… well, it's kind of like your life-force, or soul. Most simple creatures have very little _animus_. That means they have trouble affecting or being affected by the outside world. If you take a frog, and put it in a cauldron full of water, and stoke the fire very gradually, the frog will never even notice. If the change is gradual enough, and if the heat completely surrounds it, it won't be able to feel it, because its _animus_ is too weak. You can boil it alive, and it won't even know."

"That's horrible!" Sam said.

"Oh? I guess. Anyway, this place could be like that."

"What, like a big bowl of frog stew?" Sam did not appear capable of abandoning the image of a slowly simmering amphibian.

"No," Neana sighed. "I mean that the spell I worked is like the frog. I can only get the general sense of the strength of nearby magical auras by comparing them to the natural amount of background magic. If there's too much background magic, I can't get a sense of the strength of the auras." Neana, who was never very poetic at the best of times, struggled for a better metaphor. "You know how at night, when you turn away from the campfire, your eyes have to gradually adjust to the darkness? It's the same principle. Q'barra could be like a campfire – like a bonfire – no, like that stupid pillar of silver fire the Flamers are always going on about, and I wouldn't know it, because my eyes have become adjusted to the light."

"Oh." Sam whistled appreciatively. "Oh! I see what you mean. So we could be sitting right on top of magic hoodoo central, and we wouldn't even know it? Because we've been approaching it so slowly that we've had time to adjust?"

"And we wouldn't even realize it until things start exploding," Neana confirmed. "If they haven't already."

"You think that's why we got… displaced in the night?"

"Maybe. Victor said that there were demons imprisoned in the soil beneath our feet. Not just demons, but demon kings. _Rajahs_. Frankly, I think that could be used to explain just about anything happening. It could explain why there are so many giant lizards around here, or what pushed a flat plain up into a tiered plateau, or why this whole jungle is so fucking hostile to warm-blooded life."

Sam considered this. She chewed her lower lip. In her concentration she let her control of her shapeshifting slip, and her flesh flowed, her skin bleached, and her eyes filmed over until she was her old changeling shape again. "I don't suppose…" she said slowly, her voice rich with underlying horror, "that there was ever a demon imprisoned underneath Cyre? Maybe a … a really big one?"

Neana had no answer for that.

Below them, falling water curled away into tendrils of pallid, grey mist.

"Ladies!" Razze shouted, absolutely shattering the somber mood. "You'll never guess what our companion Victor has been hiding from us!"

They glanced up. Even Chandra rose gracefully from her meditative position and looked at him. Razze's face shone with boyish good humor, and Victor's face was a decidedly darker orange than it had been. Was the old hob actually blushing?

Razze grinned. "Do you want to tell them, or should I?" Victor harrumphed and cross his arms, but said nothing. "I guess it's up to me then. You see: while we were talking, our friend here let something slip. Along with being a skilled woodsman, a loving husband, and a diplomatic go-between from civilization to the reptilian races, Victor has been harboring a dark secret. You'd never guess from looking at him, but our friend here is a closet nautophile."

There was a short pause.

Sam broke it. "You mean he has sex with fish?" she asked, her voice bubbling over with horror. Neana buried her face in her hands. Sam was a very clever woman in many ways, but her streetside education often left much to be desired.

"What?" Razze looked mystified. "No! I mean he loves boats." He jabbed the hobgoblin with his elbow. "Tell them, Victor."

Victor coughed. "It's true. When I was a boy, I wanted to be a sailor. I dreamed of going out on the ocean in a great, white-winged ship."

"So why didn't you?" Neana asked.

"I did, once. I… got sea-sick. For a week." He harrumphed. "Never tried it again."

"You should have heard him ten minutes ago," Razze said, in the voice of someone determined to jolly things along. "One minute we were talking about Newthrone politics, and then I made an off-hand comment about how the idiots in charge of Q'barra sound a lot like the idiots in charge of the Admiralty Board, and suddenly questions were just pouring out of him. It was as if a great dam broke. I've never met a man so interested in the sailing life. Go on, Victor: ask them." Victor harrumphed and turned away. "Don't mind him, he's just embarrassed."

Sam was interested. "You wanted to be a sailor, Victor?"

"Uh. Yes, Miss." The hobgoblin's speech tended to get more servile the more socially uncomfortable he was. Almost shyly, he added, "I wanted to be a navigator."

"Well that's what Chandra does. Isn't that right, Chandra? I'm sure you two could find a lot to talk about," Sam lied.

Victor's brow furrowed. "I thought you were all lieutenants? Is that not your job?"

"We are," Razze said. "But that's just a rank, not a profession. All of us have other duties as well. For instance, Neana and I are First Swords. We're in charge of our ship's marine contingent. Chandra is a Navigator, and also a Ship's Master."

"That sounds like an important position," Victor said, with what sounded like genuine respect.

Neana chuckled cruelly. "It means she keeps the ship's books, ledgers, and so on. She's a glorified clerk. In the Brelish navy, they'd call her the Purser, but in the Cyran navy we like to use the old names."

"And I would hardly equate my vocation with that of a simple clerk! I am responsible for the management of all the ship's monies—" Chandra began, but Sam rolled smoothly over the potential argument by adding in, "And I'm the ship's First Bow, which means I'm in charge of all the archers, and the ballista and the stone-throwers. I'm also the ship's Cappabarrio."

"Cappabarrio? I don't know that word."

She grinned. "It means I'm the ship's official thief."

Victor looked shocked. Everyone but Sam looked mildly embarrassed. "You mean to say that that's an actual position?"

Razze tried to explain. "It's like this: whenever a ship is damaged, they put into a friendly port, and they apply to the port authority for resupply and repairs. But the port authorities aren't always… uh… completely…"

"Some of them are crooks," Neana said bluntly.

"Yes," Razze admitted. "Especially the ones that are far away from Metrol, and the reach of the royal accountants. And while they're supposed to distribute their resources among her majesty's ships impartially, according to need, they have a tendency to hoard supplies and hand them out in exchange for bribes and favors. Getting supplies out of a local governor is like squeezing blood from a rock. A hard, stony rock. A dry, parched, desert rock that hasn't seen moisture in centuries."

"So sometimes," Sam said proudly, "when the Captain needs a new mast, or brass fittings, or sacks of flour that aren't one-quarter weevils by volume, and the port authority balks, he comes to me. And I can usually find a way to get them. I can go through… adjacent… channels, and get my hands on goods that might not ordinarily be available."

Neana nodded gloomily. "She does. Sometimes the casks still have the Queen's seal on them. Sometimes, it's not even our queen."

"It's not wrong to take what ought to have been yours anyway," Sam said. "That's practically ethical, that is."

Razze smirked. "Think of it as yet another in a long line of fine old naval traditions."

"And this really happens?" Victor was fascinated. "Tell me more."

So they did. They talked of topgallants and bowsprits, of topsails and trysails and staysails. They explained to him the difference between a brig and a brigantine, and a barque and a barquentine. They argued the merits of square rigged versus lateen sails, and which was better for coastal ships, and which was better for far voyaging ships, and whether the trade-off in sailing power was made up for by the ability to tack two points into the wind. They spoke of bluff-bowed hulls and knife-bladed hulls and clinker-builts and carvel-builts until Victor begged off, because his head was spinning from all the unfamiliar terminology.

They lapsed into the natural refuge of all seamen: verbally impugning the sailing abilities of other nation's ships. They told him how the Brelish boats were all shallow-bottomed wallowers, more river pirates than true sea-goers. They described the way that Auindaren warships carried so great a load of men and weapons that they had to spread great clouds of white sails simply in order to catch the wind, and as a result they had the worst speed and points of sail of any nation's warships: in the parlance of sailors they were known as the Ogres of the Sea. They spoke of the dread galleys of the Karrnathi navy, crewed by skeletal oarsmen, which were hell to fight and deadly in coastal ambushes but had all the deep-ocean seamanship of a bathtub sailboat. They talked of the grab-bag nature of the Thanish navy, where deadly crimson cutters rubbed shoulders with impressed fishing boats and rotting pontoons, and where the Admiral of the Navy was as likely as not to have been a priest or a saintly hermit as a boat's captain, all because the Thranes prized religious zeal over seaworthiness and fighting ability. And they spoke of their own navy, which was admittedly tiny, but so fierce and well trained and well-armed that it could hold its own with any other in the world. They told him of the different kinds of ships that Cyre deployed; of the small, quick spear-ships which killed by ramming and the great shield-ships which were like great wooden fortresses filled to the brim with archers and marines, and they spoke of their own ships, The Kitten and the Bear, which were somewhere in between. Sam and Razze took turns explaining the glorious history of the Mother Bear; how it had once been an enemy vessel – the flagship of a Brelish blockade armada – before it had been captured at sea, and how Captain Klein had never lost a battle,though there had been some draws, and how, according to tradition, the figurehead sported a bear cub representing each of the three ship's watches, and how each watch group and their officers was responsible for painting and decorating their own cub.

"Mine is lavender," Sam put in.

"My watch's is a lot manlier," Razzed added quickly.

Even Neana felt moved to speak of the "curse" of the Black Cat, that killed every male officer until the ship was eventually commissioned entirely by women and ironically renamed the Dire Kitten. "Since then," she added dryly, "the ship has become the most desired listing for male sailors in the fleet. I can't imagine why."

By this point in the day the sun was beginning to flag and the five of them were more than halfway up the final cliff; the so-called Screaming Wall. The streams of water that had dotted the other cliffs were gone, replaced by jagged crags and cruel, whipping winds. The wind made a high, keening sound as it clutched at the face of the rock which did indeed sound like a woman's grief-stricken cries. Victor explained that it was called The Wail by some, who whispered darkly that it was an orphan-maker or a wall. At this height, the cliff's face was more exposed to the naked elements, and so the carved hand-holds were eroded and worn; every strong gust threatened to pull them off the face of the wall. Neana looked down once and saw that Chandra's face was ghastly in the orange light of sunset. She felt a stab of unaccustomed pity, but could do nothing but keep her flight spell at the forefront of her mind. All of them kept the conversation going purely to keep themselves from thinking about the drop.

It was fortunate that they had Sam and Razze with them, because between the two of them they could keep the words flowing like water. They waxed poetic. They tried to make Victor feel the ocean as they did. They described the way in which at ship at sea was like a musical instrument, how the crew coaxed speed from the taught lines and billowing sails like a musician drawing chords from a harp. They told him of the way that the water moved with the ship, and around the ship; how water had its own rich landscape. Sometimes you got sweet flowing ocean current, like a road straight to your destination, and sometimes you hit a patch of bitter bitch-sea, where hateful waves battered at the hull of your ship like fists and for every league you moved forward you were pounded two leagues back. They talked of the calm glass seas, where the water was so still and flat that sailors could go mad and believe that they could walk across the face of it, and the wine-dark Rage Sea, where even on a calm day the waves were like moving walls of water as tall as a ship.

Neana felt her heart moved by unaccustomed nostalgia, and she found herself missing the sea.

They ran out of words by the time the sun set, after they had finally pulled their aching limbs over the lip of the Screaming Wall and lay in crumpled piles upon the ground. Even Razze, always the soul of endurance, gasped and wheezed and poured his canteen over his face.

"We'll make camp here," Victor said, and the four lieutenants gave little cheers of relief. But when Neana reported that there was another of those obsidian slabs a few dozen yards from the cliff's edge, his face grew troubled and he changed his mind. "We'll go on a little farther."

They walked in the closing darkness, beneath trees whose gnarled bark was like running wax and whose limbs dripped with hanging mosses. They walked through wells of almost palpable shadow, and they stumbled with every other step despite the blue fire that Neana called up to light their way. They passed two more of the huge blocks of black glass, and they were only a few minutes past the last of them when Victor decided that they could go no farther in the gloomy dark.

"It's only a matter of time before one of you trips and kills yourselves," he said. "We'll have to rest here."

"What about the obsidian?" Neana objected.

"Those were once paving stones for the Devils' roads," he sighed. "And in those days, all roads led to Ka'rhashan. They'll only get more common as we get closer to the city."

When they were done eating, and Sam had pulled out her box-harp, Victor turned bashful again. "Could you play me a sea shanty?" he asked. "A proper one? Like _Lonesome, Lowly Waters_, or _Last Voyage of the Ocean Queen_?"

This confused them. "I've never heard either of those," Sam said.

"What? Well what about _The Hanging of Jack O'Green-Waters_? Or _The Maiden's Lament?_"

"Never heard of those either. Have any of you?" None of them had. "I can play you _Drop of Blood_," Sam offered. "Or _Tavern Champion_, or _The Good Ship Fornication – _that's my favorite_ –_ or _Lolling Molly's Complaint_."

Victor looked mystified. "I've never heard any of those."

This went on for some time, with Sam and Victor each naming long lists of songs that the other had never heard of. Sam sang a few snatches of this and that, usually choosing the dirtiest, liveliest part of each song, and Victor would hum a few notes of the songs that he knew, which were usually mournful dirges.

_Blood Red Roses_? No. _Bonnie Portmore_? No. _The Last Mermaid_? Nope. _Haul the Bowline_? Never heard of it.

Finally Razze brought the whole thing to a head by observing, "It seems to me that there are basically two kinds of sea shanties. There are the kind that people on land sing about the sea, which are full of wishing and wailing and lamenting and pining for lost loves, and there are the kind that sailor's sing about getting back to port, which are about drinking and fighting and, ah…"

"Fucking and whores," Sam supplied.

"Right. Right. I guess that makes sense; when a sailor is at sea, he's not thinking about the beauty of the moons on the misty waters, or the call of the lonesome gull. A sailor has his eye on a good, hot meal, a measure of rum, a bed that isn't damp, and somebody warm to share it with."

"Poets do not write odes to what they have," Chandra said, "but to what they lack, and desire."

"Well put. Seamen are a busy, practical lot on the whole. They don't have the time or energy for frivolities. It's only the people on land who have the spare time necessary to ponder the mysteries of the sea." He paused. "It's a kind of metaphor for existence, you see?"

"That was some prime philosophizing, Razze." Sam said admiringly.

"Thank you."

"Well now that I'm on land again," Sam said, "I'm starting to miss the sea. I guess I'm thinking like a landlubber. So I think I'll play some of these philosophical sea songs, if our new friend Victor is willing to teach them to me."

He was, and they did. Some of them were quite sad, and many of them were hauntingly beautiful, even if they did contain a little too much "too-rah-loo-rah" and "down by the sea-o, the sea-o" for Neana's taste. And then she played a few of the old shipboard favorites: the Cussing Round they used to raise the anchors – "Oh, you have to cuss up the anchor, otherwise the anchor, she won't rise." – and _The Good Ship Fornication_, which was probably the filthiest song ever sung in any language, and caused Chandra to excuse herself and retreat to her tent after only three verses.

It was the best night they all had together in Q'barra.

It was also the last.


	22. Appendix 3: Theme Songs

These are the theme songs for each character, as well as musical notations for certain themes and events. All of these are drawn from the playlist I listen to while writing.

I have also updated Appendix 2 with more accurate builds for the entire team.

* * *

Title / Artist

* * *

**Neana**

Battle Theme: "The Tide Begins To Rise" / Demon Hunter

Theme 1: "Blue Eyes" / Within Temptation

Theme 2: "Bad Habit" / Dresden Dolls

**Sam**

Battle Theme: "Counselor of a Left-handed Boy's Camp" / One Way Letter

Theme 1: "100,000 Fireflies" / The Magic Whispers

Theme 2: "The Competition" / Kimya Dawson

**Razze**

Battle Theme: "Bruja Tortura" / Flametal

Theme 1: "Promise" / Eve 6

Theme 2: "My Own Worst Enemy" / Lit

**Chandrasitari**

Battle Theme: "Hide and Seek" / Imogen Heap

Theme 1: "Get Up" / Amel Larrieux

Theme 2: "Praan" / Gary Schyman

**Victor**

"Rusty Cage" / Johnny Cash

**Brute the Heavy, leader of the Newthrone Thieves Guild**

"Put You On Game" / Lupe Fiasco

**Captain Asheel Klein**

"Can't Change Me" / Chris Cornell

**Captain Alexia ir'Arth**

"Lithium Flower" / Scott Matthew

**Sam and Neana's Romantic themes**

Theme 1 (Neana to Sam): "Hate (everything but you)" / Dresden Dolls

Theme 2 (Sam to Neana): "Blue Eyes" / Cary Brothers

**What it sounds like when Sam sings**

"Believe Me If All" / Allison Crowe

"The Virginian" / Neko Case and her Boyfriends

**Nautical Ditties.**

In the last chapter, Sam and Victor had a discussion about many nautical songs. Several of these were renamed versions of real songs, or lyrics lifted from real life sea shanties. I've reproduced them here.

Good Ship Fornication: "Good Ship Venus" / Loudon Wainwright III

Lonesome, Lowly Waters: "Turkish Revelry" / Loudon Wainwright III

The Maiden's Lament: "The Maid on the Shore" / Stan Rogers

Last Voyage of the Ocean Queen: "Ballad of Yarmouth Castle" / Gordon Lightfoot


	23. 17: Part 1: Wherin Neana breaks

This chapter is split into two parts. Part two will be up soon.

* * *

The dream began as it always began.

"_Be good for Mommy, Ne-ne. Don't make a peep." _

_That's what her Mommy had said and so she would be very good, even if she was scared. Especially if she was scared. Later she knew she would go to Mommy and tell her how scared she had been, and how quiet she had been, and Mommy and Daddy would both tell her how brave and good she had been, and they would hold her and maybe give her a sweet. After Mommy and Daddy had scared the bad man away._

Neana screamed.

_Neana could see the bad man from inside the cupboard where Mommy had put her, because the cupboard had a cracked board in it—_

She screamed.

_The bad man with the pointy ears – he was an elf, a real elf, not just part elf like her Mommy and Daddy – said something, but Neana didn't understand it; it was maybe elvish, but funny sounding elvish, not like they spoke in the village. Her Daddy said "No," in a big deep voice. Her Daddy was a big man, and the elf was a little skinny man. The bad man didn't have a Crossbow or even a pitchfork, just some shiny clothes and some weird curvy thing on his back. A scythe, maybe. The bad elf ought to be scared of Neana's Daddy. The bad elf would—_

Inside her own head, she screamed.

_The Crossbow made a slap sound, and Neana was shocked. Her Daddy had shot someone! The pointy little arrow kind of bounced off the bad elf's shiny metal clothes and fell on the ground. He didn't even act like it hurt. Neana whimpered. She had promised to be good and brave, but she was very, very scared. She was sure in a second she would make a mess in her dress, she was so scared, because the bad elf wasn't running away. The bad elf was coming closer, and reaching for the thing on his back._

More screams. If her dreaming self had possessed a throat, she would have screamed herself mute.

_When the bad elf moved, she couldn't see it. He was too fast. All she saw—_

No!

_was her Daddy's head—_

No!

_fall off. _

**No!**

Wailing in pain and terror, running on sheer force of will, she jerked herself out of the dream.

Neana sprawled face down in the sand. The sand was white as chalk dust, fine as powdered bone. She moaned in anguish: with each choking inhalation, the tiny grains caked her mouth and nostrils. She didn't even notice. The blank expanse drank her tears, and where they fell it turned the color of grey misery.

The weeping passed, in time.

Neana stood in the center of a small, deserted village. Its buildings were plain and rustic, laid out in a straight line down the town's only street. Decades ago the houses and shops around her must have been lovingly maintained by families of rural farmers and poor tradesmen. Now their paint was peeling and their windows were hollow, unshuttered sockets. Vines were in the process of pulling down their walls, and in some places, roofs had collapsed. It was the corpse of what had once been a happy little community.

Most of a broken, rotten sign was still legible, canted drunkenly in a drift of alabaster sand from where it had torn loose from the side of the inn. "-lcome to Delance."

She had been born here.

She turned away and found that, in the paradoxical logic of dreams, while her home village had been on the edge of the great Talenta grasslands, it was now a seaside retreat. The ocean had come to Delance. Waves lapped at the foundations of the dry goods store. Only a round depression in the windblown dunes marked the spot where the village well had been. Her bare feet made soft sighing sounds in the white sand as she walked towards the ocean.

Bare feet? She looked down at herself, and discovered that she was wearing a simple white dress, of the kind that young girls used to wear to the Maiden's Dance every spring. When the crest of the rising waves came up to her ankles, she stopped. When the water receded, it left her feet stained a dark and ominous crimson.

The sea was the color of blood.

One thing at a time, she told herself. If she took each thing in its turn, the strangeness might not overwhelm her. The sea was the color of blood, the hue and texture of red wine. It lapped at her toes and the foam it left in its wake was a frothy pink, the color of coral. Its touch stained her feet, but did not color the sand. The next wave rose to her calves: the tide was coming in.

The sky was even worse. Above the waves, the horizon was the color of molten brass. Its lurid orange light bathed her limbs, and played across the white folds of her dress. She followed the arc of the sky upwards—and went blind.

Neana reeled. She looked down at the sand, and could see again: she watched ten little crimson toes wriggle in the sand. She looked back at the horizon, and saw only a gaping void. The horrible brass sky stretched up to a certain height, and then there was a gap. Not even a darkness, but a nothingness. Her eyes slid right off the fissure without seeing. It was the color of impossibility; you could no more see the gap than you could taste flame, or feel a dead man's breath. It hurt even to think about it, and she understood instinctively that if she were to stare into the abyss for too long, she would go mad. Well, madder than she already was. Out of a sense of self protection, she looked above the impossible break in the horizon, and saw a clear sapphire sky. And above that: turquoise waves, stretching as far as the eye could see. The ceiling of her world was a great, windswept ocean.

Neana closed her eyes as she worked it out; anything but look at that horrible, horrible gap. Yes, that made a kind of sense. Ocean above and ocean below, each with its own peculiar atmosphere. Two separate worlds, joined imperfectly at the sky, with a gap separating them. A fissured universe, with madness between. It was insane, but it fit what she saw.

Why was she in this lurid, bloody half of the world? Why not the clean blue seas above her? She was afraid she knew the answer.

With her back to the rotting hulk that was her birthplace, she walked into the ocean.

The sea was shallow. When the waves crested over her thighs and lapped her lower belly, the water ceased rising. Wine-dark liquid stained her white dress like a bandage covering a spurting wound. Not quite wading, not quite swimming, she pushed herself through the waters. With great concentration, she avoided looking at the naked gap.

Then the floor of the ocean dropped away beneath her. Instead of sinking, she remained where she was, floating at hip height. The water around her rippled, and she was struck by the sense that while she was coasting along at a gentle bob, she was also, at the same time, being propelled forward at unimaginable speeds. She accepted this with the calm passivity of a sleepwalker.

When the first hulk loomed out at her, she thought that it was a mountain. As she approached it, and its shape resolved itself, so did its size; it was enormous. It was taller than ten mountains, stacked top to bottom. Nothing so large could exist in any real world. Nothing so large could be that shape, either. It was man-shaped, but made from gleaming shards of metal. Details popped out at her as she drew closer: the sound of metal blades sliding against one another, the pulsing gleam of bloody, exposed flesh peaking out from between the blades, and the way the razor edges were linked together by twisted knots of gore and sinew. It was a livid horror made of steel and flayed flesh and brutal ruin.

And Neana knew its name.

When her path took her away from the Mockery, Neana breathed a sigh of relief. She had no desire to come in contact with that particular God, and was careful not to examine him too closely, lest she accidentally draw his attention to her. Thankfully, if he even had a face, it was turned away from her. Perhaps she was beneath his notice. Another shape loomed ahead of her, and began to increase in size with each passing moment. She had the impression of largeness, and a certain spiky, scaly outline. She knew that when she was close enough to see its mouth, it would be a gaping maw filled with teeth of every description. The Devourer. Another god she did not want to meet. Thankfully, he was far away to her left, and she never came close enough to see him clearly.

She looked up. She could make out tiny shapes now, in the bowl of sea above her, and she knew them for what they were: not islands, but Sovereigns. The Gods of Eberron. She knew them by name, but preferred to think of them by their titles. The Sage. The Hearth-mistress. The Earth-mother. The Huntsman. The Warrior. The Merchant. The Smith. The Gambler. The Knight. The nine "good" gods, worshipped openly throughout Khorvaire.

They were not her gods.

She knew where she was now, but that brought little comfort. The currents of the sanguine sea carried her onward, unwilling and unseen. There were no waves here, in the home of the Gods, and no tides , but there were gentle ripples that passed through the waters and slapped against her skin. Aside from that, the sea was as calm as a mill pond.

Time drifted. Things began to happen out of sequence. She saw a silhouette on the horizon, like an ebony finger pointing towards the sky. Without transition, she was beside it; a pillar of writhing darkness, taller than the tallest mountain. There was motion within it, like tongues of flickering flame. The currents took her within an arm's reach of it, as she passed into the shadow of the Shadow. In another moment, unconnected to anything that came before, she saw a dark hillock at a great distance. It was rounded, and nearly formless, and very, very black. It wasn't until she saw the blade – a curved crescent so pale and nearly translucent that it could only have been forged from polished bone – that she recognized the God of Death. She watched him run one smooth, emaciated finger over the edge of his scythe. The Traveler she never saw at all, except perhaps as a flash of motion, or color, always at the edge of her vision.

How long did she drift in the endless ocean? Time skipped, in the way of dreams.

Without transition, her god towered over her. The final member of the dark six was as tall as a mountain. The lower body was that of a serpent, coated from thrashing tail to silky underbelly with scales the size of a building's foundations. Each rigid plate glittered in the hellish bronze light with crimson iridescence; each time the shallow waves broke over the goddess's hide, blood-red water poured in rivulets between the seams of each scale. The upper body was that of an immaculately beautiful woman. Her skin, though ruby red, was smooth and flawless. Her proud, jutting breasts inspired blasphemous thoughts. The great, leathery wings of a dragon emerged from her shoulders and rustled gently in the still, humid air; her wingspan, from tip to tip, could have thrown a continent into shadow as she flew overhead. Her face was terribly beautiful, her bearing upright, and her poise more regal as than any queen's. In almost every respect she was the perfect incarnation of Neana's ideas of human beauty and majesty.

There were only two flaws. Her hair, which fell down her back to the point where her scales began, was a tangled rat's nest. It was snarled with knots and tangles, and, at seemingly random intervals, great splinters of broken bone or animal horn had been intertwined with the locks. The pieces of yellowed bone jutted out crazily in all directions in a halo around her head, making an impromptu crown. The other flaw was her eyes; she possessed none. Instead, the empty sockets where they should have been were filled with blood so dark that it looked black. Though it filled the hollows of her eyes, it never threatened to pour down her cheeks like tears; instead the blood seemed content to churn and bubble inside those empty sockets like a cauldron on the point of boiling.

Szorawai, the Fury. Neana's god stood before her, clearly and beautifully insane.

"No."

Neana slapped herself roughly. "It's just a dream." The gods weren't like this. The gods, if they existed – and despite the best efforts of a university education, Neana still fervently believed that they did – weren't just big judgmental humans with terrifying power; they weren't just like people, only bigger and better and more terrifying. That was the kind of thing that children and primitive savages believed. The gods of Eberron were something more transcendent than that. The gods were ideas, purely divine concepts. Each deity embodied a particular aspect of the living world; not just representing it, each god _was_ that aspect wholly and truly. Arawai wasn't just a statue of some tubby woman that you prayed to in the hope that your crops would grow; she was the spring lambs and the rising grain and the year's first harvest. Onatar wasn't just a smith for the gods, he was the place where the anvil met the hammer. The Keeper wasn't just the guardian of the gateway between life and death, he was the gateway itself. He was mortality, the force that ended life. The figure in the robes and hood was only the shape that mortals, in their imperfect understanding, gave to that force.

People put faces to them to make them easier to address, but the faces were only something that they were given. The gods themselves needed none. Gods were beyond things that simple. There were even some that said that all the gods were truly one god, the fifteen aspects or faces of a single divine consciousness, but Neana had never followed that particular heresy; it was too abstract. The gods were the gods.

Intellectually, Neana knew this. Her head was sure of it. Her mind, such as it was, was clear. Her blood and bones, however, begged to disagree. Despite her own wants, she felt her knees buckle and her neck bend. She didn't choose to make obeisance any more than a falling rock can choose to fall. As best as the water would allow, she folded herself into a posture of supplication. She dared not look directly at her goddess.

She kept her eyes averted even as she felt the water around her froth and surge, even as some dark surface rushed up to meet her dangling feet. And because of that, she saw the wine-dark water pour away from her as something broad and flat and scarlet emerged from the water, carrying her with it. For one blank instant she looked down beneath her own stained toes and glimpsed a pattern of swirling ridges and raised whorls. A shockingly familiar pattern. Neana clenched her eyes shut and moaned, in a kind of impossible, terrifying, delirious ecstasy.

"A fingerprint, oh goddess it's a fingerprint."

And so she didn't see the rest of that terrifying journey, but could only imagine herself; a tiny figure, helpless and alone, perched on the house-sized fingertip of a dark and insane goddess. The fact that it was her goddess didn't make her one iota less afraid.

She might have gone on shuddering there until Szorawai devoured her, or until she went mad herself, or until the wheel of ages broke and time unspooled itself, if a voice hadn't spoken to her. It was a calm, clear voice, quiet and breathy and really a rather pleasant to the ears. It was the voice of a small girl, or childish young woman, and it said, "Oh, for the dark's sake, don't be such a coward. Stand up, at least, you big baby."

Probably at no point since the age of sixteen, when an orphaned Neana had hit her own would-be rapist in the head with a rock so hard that his eyes had rolled up into his skull and he had fallen, twitching, into the gutter, had anyone ever even entertained the idea that she was a coward. Cruel, yes. Sullen, yes. Insane, perhaps; but never a coward. She might feel fear – every living thing felt fear – but she never let it control her. She never succumbed. Her eyes snapped open with the appalling injustice of the insult, and her back stiffened in outrage, bringing her face to face with her accuser.

Herself.

For a confused moment, she thought that she was looking into a mirror. She saw a young woman, short of height, with mousy brown hair hanging in crazed, windswept tangles on either side of her face. She had delicately pointed ears, and deep-set, shockingly vibrant blue eyes, and she was standing across from Neana on the poised tip of another of the goddess's fingers. It could have been her twin. They were even dressed alike: the wind draped the same thin, white summer dress across the same modest breasts and broad, assertive hips. Only a second glance revealed the differences that set the two women apart. Neana's dress had been stained indelibly by the blood-colored ocean waves, but her double's was pure, untarnished white. Her double looked both younger, lacking the faint lines that decades of frowns and concentration had etched into Neana's face, and slimmer, without the taut muscles of a thousand, thousand sword katas. And her throat...

Her throat.

Pale, unblemished flesh.

Neana's hand went instinctively to her own throat, her thumb tracing the old, familiar ridge of pink scar tissue.

"Oh, you bitch," Neana whispered.

When she was a girl, Neana had been given a paper doll set. For about a year, it had been her most cherished possession. When she went to bed at night, she had stored it underneath her little cot, and when she woke up each morning, her hand stole down to touch it reverentially and make sure it hadn't disappeared in the night. There hadn't been many peddler-bought toys in Neana's brief childhood, and she had treasured every one. This particular doll had looked like a woman – a human woman, but her father, in a move that had endeared him forever in his daughter's mind, had glued tiny paper points over her ears – standing in a generic pose with one hand on her hip and one arm outstretched. There had been a little slot cut at each shoulder, and each hand, and at her waist. She had come with several sets of paper clothing, and by slotting their paper tabs into the doll, you could dress her up. The small wooden box contained over two dozen outfits: mostly pretty dresses, but the artist had seen fit to put in other clothes as well, taking the long odds that little girls might like to do something other than wear pretty dresses. The doll's name had been Arabel, and by changing her clothes you could give her different professions. Put on an apron and slot a hammer into her hand and she became Arabel the blacksmith. Give her a tray of drinks and a different apron and she was Arabel the innkeep. She could be Arabel the merchant, Arabel the troubadour, Arabel the priestess, or Arabel the barrister. There had even been a little suit of grey chainmail and a little broadsword, so that you could make her Arabel the knight.

Real life did not work that way. You couldn't just put on a different set of clothes to become a different person – well, Sam could, but those were lies. In real life, there would be a thousand tiny differences between Arabel the innkeep and Arabel the knight. A thousand tiny choices would have changed their separate lives; different sorrows would mark their faces, different smiles would cling to their lips, different lovers would have traced the contours of their bodies. You cannot change one thing about a woman's life without changing everything.

As if to prove this, her double smiled. It was an unaffected gesture, both clean and radiant. It was not the smile of a woman who had committed murder.

"You bitch," Neana repeated.

"Who, me?" Her double's smile widened.

She had dimples, honest-to-goddess dimples! Neana didn't have dimples. Or, at least, she didn't think she did. She'd never checked. "You're me. You're what I would have looked like if I had never – if my parents hadn't been – if..."

"That's right."

Whole constellations of emotions were unfurling in the space behind Neana's eyes. Her hands balled into fists. Fat blue sparks leapt out from between her clenched fingers and earthed themselves in the folds of her dress. She turned away to face the horizon. With a supreme mental effort, using all of her willpower, Neana regained control of her anger. She stared into her open palm until the ball of crackling flame dwindled and went out. Only then did she face her double.

"That's a cruel fucking trick you just played on me, you know that?" Her double only smiled, with such sappy, undiluted innocence that Neana wanted to puke. "So what are you supposed to be? Neana the innocent? Neana the sweet and cute? Neana the farm girl, who never ventured more than a day's ride from her village?"

"Something like that."

"Bullshit."

Her double twirled. She was standing, like Neana, on one of the goddess's fingertips. Her dress flowed and billowed around her like the curve of a bell. Her feet danced lightly over the spirals and whorls of the great red fingerprint. She laughed for the sheer pleasure of laughing, and her voice was a carillon of silver bells. "Should I tell you of our life? Would you like it if I told you about your house? It's a little white cottage on the edge of the old Gregor farm. It has a thatch roof and a stone hearth and green shutters over the windows that never close properly because you're a terrible carpenter. It sits atop rolling hills, and you can see all your land, from the road to the mill spring, from Gregor's fence to the edge of the stone wall that marks the grasslands. It's only a few acres, but you love them, because they're yours. You raise sheep for wool, and every spring your entire family gathers together to help in the lambing."

"Fuck you."

"You make cheese. You're famous for it; as far away as Jarp and Tronish there are people who have heard of Tacey's cheeses. Your wife paints the wax onto ever wheel, and stamps them with the farm brand."

"Wife?" That stopped her, for a moment. "So even in my hypothetical dream life, I don't have much use for men," she sneered.

"Her name is Kari," her double said wistfully. "She has skin like chocolate and beautiful hazel eyes. She's fully human, but you never hold that against her. You met her at the Lorn fairgrounds, where she had a booth selling sewing kits. The first time she took you to her bed, you told her you loved her. It was a Nymm wedding. Your father gave you away. It was the only time you ever saw him cry—"

"Don't," Neana said quietly. "Don't you dare speak to me of my parents."

"They're older now, of course, but they don't show it. Elven blood is wonderful like that. Your mother—"

"Shut up."

"—can still turn out some of the finest fleece throws in the county, when she sets her hand to knitting. She doesn't have as much time now, of course, since she's so busy raising the twins."

"Shut up!"

"Little Nadeira is a hellion, but Natall takes after her big sister Neana in—"

"I said shut up!" Fire poured unbidden out of Neana's quaking fists. Sapphire tongues of eldritch flame leaked out from between white, clenched knuckles. With a cry of anguish, she pounded both fists against her breast with a sound like a thunderclap. Crackling novas of blue light momentarily turned the goddess's crimson palm beneath her a shade of pale violet. "Shut!" she threw her right fist like a punched and hurled a gout of flame at her double. "Your fucking!" She threw another ball of fire. "_Mouth!_" She brought both fists together and a blade of crystalline blue flame appeared between them, a perfect copy of _Sharneth_ writ in heat and light. It burned so brightly that it seared her eyes, and behind her, her shadow grew a razor's edge.

Her double deflected both fiery orbs with a casual gesture. She caught each one on the tips of her outstretched fingers, and tossed them into the sea below. "Was that all? For a moment there, I thought you wanted me dead. Your parents would be so ashamed. An apprentice could do better."

Neana screamed. Half-remembered spells fluttered at the edges of her remaining shreds of rational thought. She grabbed one, a spell she had only even heard about from second hand sources, and pounded the fire of her hate into it. Substituting raw anger for magical focus, she forced the spell to catch hold. She held her sword up vertically before her, in a guard stance. It flickered, and split in half lengthwise. Now there were two swords, one in her hands, and one floating before her. The floating blade crackled and pulsed, and split again. And again, and again. Eight blades surrounded her, forming a shield. Sixteen blades. Thirty two. Sixty four. More than a hundred. Neana was surrounded by a jungle's overgrowth of crackling blue razors.

"Very impressive," her double said. She still sounded as bubbly and cheerful as a schoolgirl. "You always were so clever and good at maths."

"Eat shit and die."

"And always quick of wit, too."

Neana pointed her sword. A hundred blades followed the gesture, seeking her double's heart. They flew. Their passage shook the air, and to Neana's ears it sounded like the flight of ravens.

Her double danced, in the azure rain. She spun and pirouetted, each step a joyful movement, and when the blades had passed, she stood unharmed. Only the ragged, singed hem of her dress bore witness to Neana's attack.

"Delightful! Do it again."

Neana was silent. She quivered. She bowed her head. Her hair, unkempt and wet at the ends, fell and covered her face. It hid her eyes, which were cold and blue and insane with quiet desperation. She was past swords and spells now. She took in a deep breath, slowly, over several heartbeats; the world seemed to breathe in with her. She held it. Released it. Then, in one violent, unexpected gesture., she took her blue sword in both hands and snapped it over her knee. Arcs of purple lightning flew out of the shattered ends and earthed themselves in her flesh. Pale blue fire bled out in all directions. The crystalline sword disintegrated with alarming speed into heat and light, which Neana strove desperately to contain within her huddled hands. It took every ounce of her concentration, and all the force of her hate, but she fed the arcing rays of arcane power back into itself. After a few moments, she was left clutching to her chest something like the corpse of a dying star; it blazed with terrible light from between her interlaced fingers.

She smiled wickedly at her twin. "Catch," she said, and opened her hands. The force of the blow drove her to her knees. Without transition, a lightning bolt connected the two women, with one of its ends grounded in Neana's trembling fingers and the other earthed in her twin's heart. The attack lasted only an instant, but the power of the blast was so great, and its light so bright and blinding, that Neana's entire vision was taken up by purple afterimages for some time afterwards.

When her sight cleared, she saw that her double still stood, completely unharmed. Between her breasts a tiny hole, charred around the edges, had been burned into her dress. She smiled, still no hint of cruelty marring her expression. She was clapping, with what seemed to be genuine enthusiasm. "Very good!"

* * *

To be continued.


	24. 17: Part 2: Wherin Neana breaks free

When her sight cleared, she saw that her double still stood, completely unharmed. Between her breasts a tiny hole, charred around the edges, had been burned into her dress. She smiled, still no hint of cruelty marring her expression. She was clapping, with what seemed to be genuine enthusiasm. "Very good!"

"What…" Neana whispered.

Her double laughed, and leapt. She cleared the span between the goddess's giant fingertips with ease, and alighted by Neana's side. With surprising strength she bent down and lifted Neana to her feet. "Very good! You did much better than expected. Truly, it is no longer in any doubt: you are a child of the Fury."

Neana groaned. "What are you? Just what the hell are you?"

"No, sweet twin, the question is: what are you? Half-elven? A wizard? A soldier? A madwoman? Perhaps all these things, or perhaps something less. It has been so many years since you were touched: time for many things to be lost. You never acted like the others. It had to be made certain."

"Stop that!" Neana screamed. She gripped her double's wrists with what should have been bone-grinding force. "Stop talking in riddles. Stop it with the cutesy allusions and the fake poetry. Just tell me what's going on, in plain fucking language."

Her twin cocked her head to one side. She wore an expression that would have been called calculating on any other face. Neana thought it made her look petulant. She broke Neana's hold without apparent effort. "There are two answers to that question. I will give you both, if you answer one of my questions as openly and honestly as possible. Do you agree to these terms?"

"Yes," Neana said flatly.

"Very well: on the night that a Valenar outrider slew both of your parents, he also slit your throat. The wound was mortal, I assure you. You've hacked enough throats yourself to know how it works. You couldn't have lasted five minutes, with a wound like that. And yet, you did better than that. How many hours was it before your useless neighbors came to check on you?"

As if the word was dragged out of her, Neana said, "Four."

"Fours hours alone, in the dirt, holding your own weeping lifeblood in with both hands. Why did you live? Why you, when so many others died?"

Neana looked away. "You know why."

"Say it."

"Fuck you." Neana articulated each word like a thrown knife.

"You have to say it. That was the deal. You gave your word: cross your heart and hope to die."

Neana stared into her hands. The sea had stained them crimson. The creases of her palms were still slick with that bloody water. Her eyes were as wide and unknowing as a child's. She said, "It was a miracle. The Goddess – Szorawai – she saved my life."

A small, secretive smile crossed her twin's face. "Is that what you really think?"

Neana stared at her coldly. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

"Why?"

"I was as good as dead. You know that. I ought to have died there. But I was so terrified, and so… angry." She made two fists. "I hated that murderous fucking elf for taking my family. I hated my parents for not protecting me. I hated… I was angry at the whole damn world, the way that only a stupid child can be really, truly, self righteously angry. I was in a rage. It was the first really violent thought of my entire life, and it lasted four hellish hours. What other god would have answered a prayer like that, in that place, in those circumstances?"

"And so you worship her?"

"Yes."

"Out of love, or fear?"

Neana stared as if she did not understand the question. "She is my Goddess. She made me what I am."

"And you believe? Really, and truly believe?"

"Yes."

"You keep the faith?"

"Yes!"

"Despite your doubts? Or will you lie and say that there I no doubt in your heart?"

Neana turned. The Fury's face filled her vision, so much closer now, as huge and implacable as one of the twelve moons. "My Goddess," she whispered, "Why do you torment me?"

"She won't answer you, you know," her twin said. Her voice was almost wistful. "The Gods do not – _cannot_ – speak to mortals directly. They are as far removed from language as a stone is from tears."

Neana whirled on her. "Then what are you supposed to be? Her voice? Her angel? A devil sent to mock my pain?" She spat. "You might as well tell me. A deal," she sneered, "Is a deal."

"Something like that…" For the first time a serious expression crossed her twin's face. It still didn't quite make her into the person Neana saw in the mirror, but it did make the resemblance less eerie. "I am you. I am the possibility of you, what you might have become in another life, or another world. If that Valenar foraging party had picked a different farm-house, if a horse had thrown a shoe, if the wind had come from the south instead of the east: if, if, if. You have heard the Conjurers of the Arcane Congress speak of shifting planes, and worlds beyond worlds? You are aware of the speculation that each choice, each path, each possible interpretation of the great Prophecy, has an end point in a real world; a separate Eberron for every possible contingency?"

"Yes, I've heard of it" Neana replied. "It's a load of bullshit. There's only one world."

"Perhaps. Perhaps I am only a hallucination in your dream. It may be that I am a comforting sop that you have summoned up in your hysteria. But perhaps the other is true as well; perhaps, somewhere out there, there is a happier world; a world where things went right."

"Fuck you!" Neana screamed. It tore through her throat and emerged as a harsh, rasping whisper.

Her twin – the 'Good' Neana – was taken aback. "Most people would be pleased at the thought. Doesn't everyone dream of a better world than this one?"

"Yeah? Most people are idiots. It doesn't fucking matter if there is another sappy-happy world out there. I still have to live in this one." She unclenched her fists; her nails had cut deep grooves into the skin of her palms. With an unimaginable effort will, she drew back her anger and smoothed out her features. When she spoke next, her voice had lost as much of its rasping quality as she could make it. She sounded cool , calm, and steady. Only the coldness of her eyes betrayed the effort her stillness was costing her. "You said that there were two answers to my question. So far, you haven't even given me one. It's time to pay up."

"Very well." She bowed her head, and made an odd, ornate, welcoming gesture with her arms. For a moment, Neana feared that she was about to be hugged. "You asked me what was happening to you. As I said, there are two answers. Each is equally likely to be true. There is no way of determining which version is correct, and which is not. Whichever you decide to believe, it will be at your own discretion. Do you understand?"

"Get on with it."

Her twin nodded. "The first possibility is that you have been drawn to the realm of the Gods, or as near to the realm of the Gods as your mortal soul can withstand. Your dreaming mind cloaks its perceptions in metaphor and half-remembered catechisms. You see the divide between the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six made manifest, because this is what your preconceptions have lead you to see. You see Szorawai in the guise of the Fury, just as she is depicted in the temples you have visited, and just as you have secretly longed to find her in your woman's heart. She is beautiful because you want her to be beautiful, and terrible because you fear that she is terrible, but even this is only the merest outline of the real truth. No mortal could bear to stand in the presence of the naked divine."

Neana's heart quickened within her chest. "You mean this is real? This could really be happening?"

"It is _possible_," her double broke in sharply, "that you have been summoned here, in dreams, by the will of the Fury. It is possible that I am here, drawn from your own fractured hopes and self loathings, to act as her voice, because your head would explode right off your shoulders if she were to say one single word in her own tongue, the language of creation. It is possible that you have been blessed to become one of her chosen; to act as her agent in the mundane world. It is possible that a great trial awaits you, to test you to destruction and ensure that you are worthy of taking a part in the pattern of the Prophecy. It is possible that all those things you have secretly hoped for and believed in are true."

"It is possible that the gods really do give a damn."

Neana gaped. Her world spun. She felt herself grow light, and with a sudden pang of intense fear, realized that she might be on the verge of waking up. For all these years, she had nurtured her religion in the shadows. She had hidden her amulet beneath the bodice of her dress even back at the Girl's Home. It wasn't the kind of thing one could wear openly in polite society. And in all those years that she had walled off her own spiritual nature, she had experienced strong doubts. It is easy for a child to believe, but it is much harder to keep the faith as an adult. She found that the real world did not always accord with the teachings of the holy texts. At the University she had read the histories of Khorvaire, and discovered that there had once been a hundred different gods. Each race had nurtured their own little pantheon, or worshipped their ancestors, or the spirits of the trees and rocks. And then the humans had come along and said that, no, there weren't a hundred gods, but only fifteen. They said that each of these other gods was an aspect, an imperfect understanding, of the fifteen true gods. They explained that deities like Shargon, the toothy god the feral sahuagin race, and Zelnokkat, the Fanged Maw of the Mror dwarves, were really only two faces of the Devourer, the god of sea and hunger.

When Neana had read this, in her heart she had thought it sounded like a load of convenient bullshit. It sounded like something a snake-oil salesman would come up with. It sounded, bluntly, made up. But at the same time she believed, really and truly believed, in the Devourer, and all the gods of her childhood; even the ones of the Sovereign Host, with whom she no longer felt much kinship. She believed, not because of her experiences, but in spite of herself. She believed because her heart told her to, even as her cynical mind told her she was being a superstitious coward.

Here, now, was she finally about to be told that her long suffering faith would be rewarded?

"Not so fast," her double said, as she cheerfully crushed Neana's rising hopes. "I did say that there were two possible explanations for this little slumbering nightmare? Well, here's the other explanation: you are going insane."

"What?"

"Oh, don't look so shocked. Surely you had to see this coming? After all, our parents were murdered in front of you, you spent a soul crushing decade bouncing from orphanage to orphanage, and your life since then hasn't exactly been a tea party. None of that is conducive to good mental health."

"Go fuck yourself," Neana spat. Her voice cracked on the final syllable.

"What an original comeback. I shall file it away with your other pearls of wisdom."

"I'm not crazy!"

"No?" Her twin looked genuinely surprised. "Then how do you explain all those little incidents; the ones that the Admiralty board inquest was so interested in? The things they never quite dared call war crimes? Lapses of judgement? Happenstance? I suppose that those two captured elven officers just slit their own throats, then?"

"They were trying to escape," Neana said flatly. "They died of wounds sustained during recapture."

"Yes, yes. I'm sure that you struck out purely in your own defense. Two men armed with sharpened bed slats must have posed a terrible danger."

"They were Emerald Claw spies!" she snapped.

"Yes, that was rather convenient. You were so relieved when you heard that the inquest discovered ciphered messages in their cell. Once those came to light, the inquiry board had no choice but to pardon the woman who had stopped Karrnathi spies from getting away with copies of a stolen Cyran army codebook. And what clever and resourceful spies they turned out to be! Improvising weapons, creating writing utensils, and even somehow gaining possession of the key to their own cell. I believe that the terrible traitor who slipped it beneath their door was never caught, was she?'

Neana remained silent.

"And that was only the one incident that the Admiralty board was made aware of. Captain ir'Arth kept a number of little… ah… discrepancies to herself, didn't she? Like Sailor Adruval's broken jaw? Or the Talos twins; I believe one of them still walks with a limp. Or that mysterious fire aboard the Heralding Angel that somehow managed to put 3 sailors in the hospital with broken bones. None of those ever made it into the Captain's log, did they?"

"That was personal. Fist fights and insults and… well, the Angel's crew had it coming. Even a Silver Flamist would give me that, once she'd spent three minutes in a room with those idiots. And all those things happened on leave, unofficially," Neana said. "The Captain knows my worth. She knows that I would never do anything to endanger the ship."

"Yes," her double said sweetly. "Captain ir'Arth is a good woman, and she believes in the inherent capacity for goodness of all living things. She thinks that you're a diamond in the rough; that if she makes herself into a strong enough example of human decency, that you'll come around to her way of thinking, perhaps even become a better person. Missionaries of the Flame are like that." She smiled fondly. "But then, Captain ir'Arth doesn't know about the bookbinder's apprentice, does she?"

Neana froze. Every muscle in her body seized up at once. Even her heart stopped, for a moment, within her breast. "You can't—"

She was overridden. "No one knows about the bookbinder's apprentice, is that what you were about to say? And you'd be right. No one knows. Not even the bookbinder. He probably still thinks that the boy ran away. After all, there were no witnesses."

Neana shuddered. "I…" Tremors gripped her ragged throat and took away whatever words she had intended to speak. Entirely without her being aware of it, tears coursed down her cheek.

"I suppose that someone eventually found his body, but by then there wouldn't have been much left of him. Certainly not enough left to establish his identity. Sewer rats are so very good about that sort of thing. I'm sure no one tried very hard, not in Metrol; it was never quite as bad as Sharn, but he wouldn't be the first unidentified corpse to wash up in its storm drains, would he? Even if he could be identified, who would they bring in to recognize him? It's not as if he had a family. I believe he was a foundling?"

"He had friends," Neana said thickly. She seemed to have grown much smaller; her entire body had the appearance of a clenched fist. "Those two boys he ran around with. They used to pick on me."

"Childhood friends," her double said with a shrug. "You know what boys are like at that age. I'm sure that by the time his body was eventually found, they had already joined another gang."

"They twisted my arm until it almost broke," Neana whispered. She wasn't looking at anything now; whatever her eyes saw, it existed only for her. "They hit me. And they pinched me. And the little skinny weasel-faced one wanted to do worse things; I could see it in his little pink eyes. They called me 'rat girl'. Because of my ears. And because they knew I went through the garbage, sometimes. Sometimes they stole my food. They called me a little shitty orphan bitch, and they threw things."

"Adolescence is such a cruel time," her twin commiserated.

"And then one night, the big one found me by himself when he was throwing out the Bookbinder's old tallow-glue. He always thought he was better than me, because he was an apprentice and I was…" Still staring at nothing, Neana's brows furrowed in indignation. "I was ten times smarter than him, even at that age. He couldn't even read! All those books, and it meant nothing to him. They might as well have been blocks of wood, in his hands. I should have been the apprentice, not him!"

"Tragic." Her double was the perfect soul of understanding.

"He found me going through the ruined quartos that were going to be pulped to make new paper. It was a children's book, about Andele, the Alabaster Queen. My father told me that story. The bookbinder's apprentice told me to clear out, to go through someone else's garbage, and then he started insulting me. All the old names. Rat girl. Orphan. Bitch. Then he started in on my parents, because he knew that would make me cry. He called my mother a whore, and my father a coward. He said the elves butchered them like dogs, because they wouldn't fight back. He said… he said…"

"That your parents deserved to die?"

Neana screamed. One hand lashed out, snake-fast, two hooked fingers aimed straight at her double's cold blue eyes. With her other hand, Neana reached for her double's throat. There was no thought to this; it was as reflexive as an eye blink. Given the startling speed of Neana's attack, it was all the more surprising how easily her opponent managed to stop it. She snagged both of Neana's wrists, while still smiling pleasantly into Neana's snarling face.

"You murdered him."

Neana struggled in that iron grip. "Fuck him! He deserved it."

"He was only sixteen." 

"So?" She sounded shrill, even to her own ears. "I was only fourteen. That didn't stop me from sticking the knife in."

"He didn't fight back. He was helpless. Unarmed."

"He was twice my size. I was a starving orphan. He could have taken me apart with his bare hands if I had let him."

Her double's grin sparkled. "So you have no regrets?"

Neana wanted to put a fist through those teeth. "What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry? Fuck your 'sorry'. I did what I did, and I lived with it."

"But he didn't, did he?" Her twin laughed. "Look at what you've become."

"I don't…" Neana trailed off. Her chest hurt. Her heart was pounding like a smithy's hammer against her ribs, and had been for the gods only knew how long. Every muscle in her body was exhausted from withstanding so much tension. Her nerves were shot, her cheeks wet with tears, and her mouth was caked with spittle.

"Are you going to stand there, now, and proclaim your sanity?"

The urge to scream came to her again, but Neana ignored it. She breathed in, and breathed out. Slowly, by force of will, she slowed the frenzied hammering of her heart. Her muscles groaned in agony as she wiped her lips and cheeks and combed her fingers through her unkempt hair. She even smoothed out the folds of her stained dress. Only when she had her internal fire firmly in her grip did she turn to her double. "Is that all you've got?"

For one brief moment the smiled flickered on her double's face. It was replaced, again just for a moment, with a look of baffled confusion. That tiny lapse filled Neana with nearly sexual pleasure. It was the first hint she'd received that her alter ego had any mortal failings whatsoever. When her double's smile returned, it was broad and warm and Neana trusted it about as far as she could spit. "Very good. Truly you have been well chosen to serve in your Goddess's cause. How do you manage it?"

"Manage what?"

"You clearly still wish to claw my eyes out and throttle me to death, but you betray no outward sign of it. I am aware of the nature of your soul, Neana. I understand the fires that fill you. By all rights, you ought to be raving and beating your breast, or howling at the moon, or peeling away your own flesh with your fingernails, and yet you do not. How is this possible?"

"It's called self control," she said sarcastically. "You've probably never heard of it. It's a wizard thing."

"Delightful!" Her double clapped with joy. "That's the first genuinely witty comeback that you've come up with all night." Neana responded with an obscene gesture. She put both arms into it. "Ah, that's more like it. That's the alter ego I've come to know and love."

Neana sighed. She was as tired as it was possible for a half-elf to be. Before now, she wouldn't have thought it would be possible to feel exhausted while asleep. "Are we done now?"

"Very nearly. It's true, you know: you might be insane. All of this, " her arms swept out to encompass the Goddess that towered over both of them and on whose hand they were standing, the sea beneath them, and the broken sky above, "is exactly the kind of thing that crazy people dream about. A solipsistic fantasy world, catering to their every delusion. If you truly are a religious nut, you might well dream of speaking to the gods. They would tell you that you are an important component of the universe; that events are rapidly speeding towards a cataclysm, that the world hangs in the balance, and that you are the fulcrum on which it will turn. The insane are very egotistical, as a rule."

Neana avoided looking where her double indicated. Through this entire conversation, she had tried to keep herself from glancing at the immense figure of the Fury. It was just too much. "And what have you come to tell me?"

"That you are an important component of the universe; that events are rapidly speeding towards a cataclysm, that the world hangs in the balance, and that you are the fulcrum on which it will turn" Her twin grinned impishly. "Come on, you had to see that line coming."

Neana resisted an urge to slap her. "Stop speaking in riddles. What do you want? Why am I here?"

"You are here because you have become important. Vast machinations are at work across the continent of Khorvaire. The death of Cyre created a great hole in the world, and many factions vie to be the ones to fill the gap. Beings who have not stirred in ten thousand years are making the first fumbling motions towards awakening. Great powers are staring intently at your piddly, broken empire."

"Wonderful. They can fucking have it. That still doesn't answer my question: why me?"

Her twin shrugged; for once, she looked solemn, and that made the gesture eerily like Neana's own. "You are in the right place, at the right time. Qbarra is one of the pre-ordained loci on which vast forces are converging. It has always been a battleground for opposed ideologies, a place of power. What's more, you are the right person to be in that place. Your skills make you ideally suited to this role. You have the capacity to guide the swinging pendulum."

"You're still speaking in riddles! Why can't you say something simple?"

"Because your stupid mortal ears would not hear me properly!" For the first time, Neana's double looked irritated. "You are aware of the Draconic prophecy? The map of mortal destiny? It is a churning mass of possibility. Every potential future of the world is described within its inconsistent text."

"Yeah, okay. I've heard of the Prophecy. Everyone's heard of the Prophecy." Neana said. "I've even seen fragments of old translations of the Prophecy in the libraries back in Metrol. Most of them turned out to be false."

"No: they were all true. Even the ones that contradict one another. Each fragment of the Prophecy describes a possibility; a way the world could go. Each is equally valid. It is the actions of certain mortals who choose the path that history takes. It could be as simple as a farmer plowing his field one day, instead of another, which diverts the path of an oncoming army, or it could be the conscience of a king. The Draconic prophecy hinges on such moments, where all things hang in the balance. Moments of crisis."

"And this is a moment of crisis? Here? Now?" Neana asked. She was getting excited, despite her natural cynicism. "Why me?"

"Not just you; there are others. The paths of a dozen fates are converging on a point in the place you call Qbarra. Three in particular concern you; it is inevitable that you will come to face them. If you wish to survive, you must destroy them." Her double held up three fingers. She folded back one. "The Child of Hunger." She folded another finger. "The Child of Hate." She folded the last finger. "The Child of Shadow."

"I don't understand.

"Nor should you. Each of them is like yourself; a child of the Gods. Whether they know it consciously, or because events have unfolded to make them so, they have become living tools of the Divine Intent. They are agents of higher powers, and they seek, for their own purposes, to control the direction the Prophecy takes."

"Damn it, I still don't understand," Neana rasped. "You make it sound like we're all pawns in some kind of cosmic chess game."

"Nothing so cliché. The gods do not play games with the universe. They do not war amongst one another. They do not use mortals as pawns. But the gods do… 'debate philosophy', would be the closest you might come to the concept." Her double considered this. It gave her a childlike, daydreaming air. "Understand: the gods are ideals. They personify the ineffable axioms that underlay experience. Simply by existing, they influence mortals to be more like themselves. Certain mortals can become paragons of one god or another, often without any intentional worship. Is the atheist Dhakaani warlord, who grinds half a continent beneath her spiked boot, any less a servant of that tyrant Mockery than one of his priests? Is the ignorant, unknowing Warforged that works an anvil for House Cannith any less a disciple of Onatar than a village blacksmith? Are the hearth-pits of pagan Halfling tents any less Boldrei's province than the holiest temple spire? Mortals serve the gods in all things, no matter what they do."

"Okay," Neana said slowly. "That fits. That's the first thing that you've said all night that makes any kind of sense."

"Your companions are a part of this as well. To a greater or lesser extent, each has been shaped by a god. That slender, arrogant half-elf bravo you travel with is one of Dol Dorn's very own. The enigmatic half-souled outcast of a witch has dedicated her life to Aureon the sage, no matter what name she puts to her faith. And your special friend," she smirked, "is one of the Traveler's deceitful brood to the depths of her tiny, conflicted soul. All of you must come to the crisis point."

"And what do we have to do then?"

"Survive," her double said flatly.

"That's it?"

"It will be enough. Whichever path the prophecy follows, it is Szorawai's will that her child be there."

"Why?"

"So that passion will survive in this world. So that a great wrong might be avenged. So that something matchless and beautiful might be broken forever. So that the world becomes a little more dangerous, untamed, and wild. The Fury could have no other goals."

Neana waved this away. "So that's it? That's all you have to tell me: survive? You're not even going to give me a hint of what I should do?"

"No."

"The prophecy hinges on me? Which path should I take?"

"You will make the choices you will make. That is enough."

Neana grunted. "Well, I suppose I shouldn't have expected any less. That's about as helpful as mystic oracles ever are in bad theatre. Thanks for nothing."

Her twin smiled cheerfully. "And, of course, I should remind you that all of this could just as easily be the desperate delusions of a madwoman. In fact, that's a much more likely scenario. The last dregs of your sanity are probably dribbling out your ears as we speak."

"Oh, yes. I'd almost forgotten about that." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "I don't suppose it's dawned on you that if this Prophecy of yours comes true, I'll know that this – all of this — was real? If I turn out to be right, then by definition, I'm not crazy."

"So clever to have spotted that! But I'm afraid that that proves nothing. The incurably insane are often credited with amazing prophetic insight. Their warped perceptions occasionally grant them deep insights into great truths, in between bouts of pissing the bed and eating bugs. So at the very least you have that to look forward to. Won't that be nice?"

The other Neana folder her arms and made an elaborate bow. Great, translucent wings sprouted from her back. Neana recognized them as exact copies of those granted by her own flight spell, but where Neana's were dusky shadow, these were scintillating light. Their silver feathers glittered obscenely in the roiling bronze light of this world. The wings flapped, her double leapt, and she was aloft. Neana watched her soar through the air with something like envy, to alight on Szorawai's enormous crimson shoulder. The goddess paid her no attention. She sat there, staring down at Neana and reminding her absurdly of a little homunculus perched on the shoulder of a studious wizard.

Suddenly the world shifted. The ground – no, the_ hand_ – under Neana's feet quaked and shivered. Neana was thrown to her knees. She watched in abject terror as the face of the Fury grew closer and closer. She was being lifted higher. She felt those eyes, like great pools of boiling blood, and she somehow knew that they were inspecting her. She tried to make some sign of worship, but she only lost her balance and fell over.

"You asked for advice?" Her double called. Neana saw the tiny figure, dressed in white, out of the corner of her eye. She was kicking her legs like a child sitting in a tall chair. "I will tell you three things. First: survive. Second: when the time comes, listen to her."

"Listen to who?" Neana screamed. The Fury was smiling, now, and while her lips were unspeakably beautiful, the teeth inside them were as jagged and splintered and serrated as a rotting pier. Neana saw a massive tongue, and a great, waiting gullet.

She was ignored. "And third: wake up."

Neana screamed as she was pitched into her Goddess's mouth. Teeth the size of stalactites, and as white and splintered as bleached driftwood, pierced her body in a dozen places. Blood spurted.

"Wake up."

Those great jaws worked, and Neana saw her guts spill, steaming, down the scarlet gullet. She shrieked, but her voice made no sound. Splintered fragments of her consciousness poured down a deepening darkness.

"Wake up!"

Neana woke up. Her eyes snapped open. She was in the same tent where she had gone to sleep. Beside her, both Sam and Chandra were snoring: Chandra gently, and Sam not so gently. Above her, a small, shadowy figure crouched.

In its hand was a knife, the blade pointed at her heart.


	25. 18: Wherin things get real

New chapter. I had this one planned out for a long time, and I finally found a place to put it in the story.

* * *

Neana woke up. Her eyes snapped open. She was in the same tent where she had gone to sleep. Beside her, both Sam and Chandra were snoring: Chandra gently, and Sam not so gently.

Above her, a small, shadowy figure crouched. In its hand was a knife, the blade pointed at her heart.

The two of them locked gazes: attacker and victim. The creature's eyes widened, and Neana saw that it had the slit pupils of a snake. It hissed. The knife plunged.

Neana's hands had always been faster than her brain; she caught the creature's wrist before the blade touched her. It gaped at her, showing Neana two rows of sharp triangular teeth. A thin, serpentine tongue lashed out to taste the air. It looked just like the other lizardfolk that had attacked them, until you got a sense of its scale. The thing was tiny! It was barely larger than a child. It hadn't been holding a knife to her breast, Neana would have laughed at it.

The lizard-man pressed both hands to the knife's hilt and pushed. It was surprisingly strong, for its size. As the blade wavered in the light of the open tent flap, Neana noticed a greasy sheen along the knife's serrated edge. It had been coated in something dark and oily. Suddenly, she really didn't want that thing so close to her skin. A brief struggle ensued, which Neana won, pushing the knife away from her. The lizardfolk withdrew the clawed hand that Neana wasn't gripping and reached for something at its side…

Neana spoke a single word.

Dark, necrotic energy flowed up her arm and into her gripping hand. The shadows in the tent thickened, and clawed hungrily at the wan light. The veins beneath her skin swelled and grew black with stolen life. Her fingertips sank into the scaly flesh of the lizard-man's forearm, as easily if they had been tipped with razor sharp talons. Her magic flowed into the creature's blood, found the essence of its life, and drank it. She felt the thin wrist she was holding shrink and sag until it was nothing more than pale, papery skin stretched over brittle bones. The wasting spread up the lizardfolk's arm; its flesh shrank and its scales flaked away as a century's worth of grave rot hit it in a single moment.

The poisoned dagger tumbled from its feeble grip, thankfully hitting Neana blunt end first. When she released the creature, nothing was left of it but a desiccated husk. Neana's heart raced and she felt the blood pounding through her veins. For the moment, she was brimming with stolen life.

Neana rolled over in her bedroll, intent on waking the other women. She had to warn them; they were sleeping with the innocence of lambs. She saw two more shadowy figures creeping through the tent, each intent on bloody murder. One was standing at Chandra's feet with a slender bone needle in each hand, while the other knelt with another of those bronze bladed daggers pressed to Sam's throat. More black grease coated their weapons. They were staring at their comrade's withered corpse in what she assumed was horror; she had taken them by surprise.

A moment hung in perfect silence while no one dared move. It was broken when the bone-dry husk of her attacker's corpse finally collapsed, its skin flaking away to dust and its bones snapping like tinder. The knife at Sam's throat jerked—

"No!"

It wasn't a spell. Spells took time to cast, and concentration. They needed gestures, and arcane words, and intricate mental gymnastics to make a hole in the world the right shape for magic to flow through. Later, much later, Neana would swear to herself that there had been no time to cast the spell that would have saved Sam's life. Not even a battle mage could move faster than the flick of an assassin's wrist. All she had time to do was reach out one futile hand and utter a desperate prayer for the power to strike down her enemies.

Her prayer was answered.

Incandescent fire filled the tent. Neana knew how to cast a spell that caused thin lines of flame to shoot from her fingertips. This was a bar of light as thick as her wrist. Just looking at it seared the fragile flesh of her eyes. The fire struck the lizard creature in the shoulder with impossible force; it didn't just burn the tiny figure, it burned through it, before going on to burn a man sized hole through the back of the tent as well. Scales sizzled and popped and flashed through the air like burning embers as the lizardfolk warrior was blasted backwards out of the tent. Its corpse tumbled slowly through the air, a quarter of its body burnt away in all-consuming fire.

Neana stared, shaking, at her hand. The skin of her fingertips was pink and smooth, and she could already tell that they would be blistered tomorrow. What the hell? She turned her gaze on the third creature, not sure where the power had come from and not sure if she could do it again. She needn't have worried.

Chandra's eyes were open. They blazed.

Amethyst light filled the tent. Despite its illumination, the shadows that filled the corners grew darker somehow, and thicker. The lizardfolk stared blankly into Chandra's violet gaze, its jaw slack and its tongue lolling. Behind it on the tent wall, its silhouette writhed in silent agony. Neana felt impossible pressure build behind her ears, and just when she thought something would burst she heard a high, thin keening sound. Neana groaned. It was like her eardrums were being raped by a mosquito.

The lizardfolk jerked. It raised one arm in a parody of natural motion, like a poorly controlled marionette. It brought one of the two long bone needles up to its snout. While its eyes stared at some faraway vision, its tongue lashed out, lightning quick. It licked the end of the needle like a lollipop, cleaning it of the greasy poison. Then it fell backwards with a soft thump, its body stiffening in toxic shock even before it hit the ground.

Neana stared in revulsion. She knew what people thought of her, but as horrible and bloody as her spells could be, she could never do anything like that. Mind magic. A violation worse than any rape.

"What's happening?" Sam yawned. She had sat up, and was staring out through the huge hole Neana had blown in the tent's wall. The canvas hadn't stopped the incandescent blast, and neither had the trees on the other side. Small fires flickered in the distant night. Sam's eyes narrowed. "The hell?" From the gods only knew where, Sam produced a slim knife.

"We're under attack," Neana said. She crouched and checked her lover's throat. No blood. She found the crude copper blade and showed it to Sam. She gestured at the remaining corpse. "Little lizards with poisoned knives."

A scaly face appeared, peering through the charred hole in the tent's side. A pair of glittering amber eyes focused on the three women, and a hissing, yipping cry went up. The little creature raised what looked like a thin pole of cane or bamboo to its reptilian snout and sucked in an audible breath. Its chest swelled and it pressed the tube to its mouth. Sam snatched the bronze dagger from Neana's hand and, in the same smooth motion, hurled it at this new attacker. It wasn't a very good throw, but with a poisoned blade it didn't have to be. The lizardman fell, screaming and clutching at a shallow gash on his arm.

"We must warn the others," Chandra said. Except that her mouth didn't open, Neana realized. The voice had simply arrived in her head without the common decency of going through her ears first. There was a sensation, as of the sound of a dozen voices speaking a single word in unison. _Alarm!_ _Alarm! _She knew, but didn't know how she knew, that the psychic shout filled the forest. Every living thing for a quarter mile in every direction felt that thought. If Razze and Victor had been asleep before, they certainly weren't now.

"I sense fighting," Chandra said, still in that same spooky mental voice. Telepathy had this to recommend it: it was faster than speaking.

Neana rolled her eyes. She didn't need a psychic for that; she could clearly hear the ring of steel against steel coming from across the campfire, where Razze and Victor had pitched their tent. She tried to think words at Chandra; the link was tenuous, and full of echoes. "How many?"

"I sense twenty— no, thirty minds out there."

"We have to help them." These thoughts, unusually quiet and grim, came from Sam.

Neana snapped her fingers. "Armor up." She felt the sensation of rapid motion, like a flock of birds taking flight, as it traveled through the astral plane to reach her, and then a full suite of armor appeared on her body. Straps cinched. Clasps clasped. Mail rattled. With another gesture, she called _Sharneth_ to her hand in the same way.

Sam tossed a quiver over one should, picked up her unstrung bow-stave, and ran a hand along its length. The Cannith Firebow Mk. II: the finest bow that military grade thaumartificery could offer, on a lieutenant's salary. With a smooth, sinuous motion it bent itself, curving and recurving into a taught double-arc. Propelled by magic, the waxen silk thread darted across the gap and threaded itself. It hummed with tension.

Chandra straightened the folds of her robe and checked to make sure that she was wearing her slim bronze diadem and her gaudy jeweled choker. She needed no weapons.

"Let's go."

They stepped out into a warzone. Flares of multi-colored light lit the scene, and Neana quickly saw why. The campfire in the center of the clearing, once small and banked down to near embers, roared and belched noxious, multicolored smoke. One of the child-sized lizardfolk had fallen halfway into the fire – and if it hadn't been a corpse at the time, it certainly was now. The hilt of a dagger was sticking out of its side, about where the kidneys would have been on a human. As Neana watched, tongues of flame licked at one of a dozen small leather bags strung on a sash across its chest. The leather crackled, turned black, and split open. Pale powder poured out into the fire and the flames turned green and doubled in size.

_That's no natural poison_, Neana thought. _There's sorcery bound up in this._

The sudden flare of unearthly light illuminated the attacking force, and Neana's stride faltered for a moment. There were dozens of small, scurrying figures darting from tree to tree in the small clearing. Ten or twelve of them had formed a circle around the tattered remains of the tent that Razze had shared with Victor. The tiny lizardfolk jostled one another and chattered in high-pitched syllables that Neana could almost understand. One of their number darted forward, jabbing a spear into the tent. Suddenly the small creature shrieked and fell away, spurting blood in a scarlet arc. Three feet of shining steel had shot out of the tent's canvas wall, and now it jerked sideways, carving an awkward hole through which Razze emerged. The half-elven bravo was bare-chested, and had had time to pull on only one boot, but he brandished a naked blade in each hand. A flick of his rapier stopped the agonized thrashing of the little lizard-man he'd speared earlier, while he kept his off-hand dagger raised to ward off attacks. The little reptilian warriors chattered to themselves, but none dared draw any closer.

Well, that's one accounted for. As for the other…

It had been Victor's turn to stand watch. He'd never seen it coming. He was sitting on the edge of a fallen tree trunk, his head bowed to his chest, with a dagger clenched in one of his hands. A casual observer might think he had fallen asleep at his post, but Neana saw the way his hand was clutching his throat. Sam was ahead of her, kneeling by the immobile hobgoblin's side.

"Is he?" Neana wondered.

Through the odd psychic link they still shared, Neana felt a wash of sadness. Sam shook her head. Mutely, she plucked an object from the back of his neck and held it up for Neana to see. It was a thin bone needle, feathered on one end. When Sam touched him, Victor's body slumped and fell to the ground, revealing four more of the tiny darts buried in his neck and back.

"Damn it!" The old hobgoblin, so stout and earthy and competent in life, looked small and somehow pitiful in death. It wasn't right. He wasn't even a soldier. He didn't deserve to be lying facedown in the clotted mud that passed for soil in this godsforsaken jungle. Neana raged, and she saw the other two women physically recoil from her anger. She felt the link between them snapped, severed abruptly by the mind-witch, who pressing a hand to her forehead and looked nauseous.

She needed to kill something, and she needed to do it right now.

The campfire flared again, bathing them in azure light, and Neana took in the battlefield. Another half-dozen of the child-sized lizards had joined the circle around Razze, darting in and out with their long, slender spears. The half-elf danced back and forth, slapping obsidian spear heads away, and riposting when he saw an opening. The battle was coalescing around the knot of fighters, and with every new lizard that joined the circle their chatter grew louder and their attacks more bold. Neana saw that they would soon have the numbers to overwhelm Razze by sheer mass, in a concerted rush. Worse, a number of them had those long bamboo poles strapped to their backs with leather bandoleers, and as she watched three of them drew the poles out, inserted something into the end, and began to raise it to what passed for their lips.

"Sam!" she shouted, but she should have saved her breath. Two arrows passed so close to her face that her view was briefly obscured by her own blowing hair. One of the pipe-wielding lizardfolk took an arrow to the throat, another sprouted one through the forearm, and Neana finished the third with a wave of her hand and a bolt of fire.

"I'll handle the ones with dart throwers," Sam said, drawing another arrow from the quiver on her hip. "You carve Razze an exit strategy."

"And I'll chart your path," Chandra said. She pressed a hand to the vulgarly large purple stone she wore on a bronze choker around her neck and it began to glow.

Neana nodded. She was already moving. There were a dozen yards and three of the half-sized reptilian warriors between her and the circle around Razze: which was to say, there were three dead lizards who didn't know it yet. She relaxed the tight rein she held on her anger, and was rewarded when vicious black flames poured out of her hands and down the edge of her blade. Evocation magic responded to the caster's emotions, she knew, and that spell was disturbingly easy to cast these days. She set her sights on the nearest lizardfolk warrior and charged.

She didn't make it very far. Time slowed, until it seemed as if a thousand years passed between each of her heartbeats. There was a deep thrum, as if the world were a guitar string and some god had just plucked it. Neana heard the sound of a thousand people all murmuring at once, each voice distinct but unintelligible.

"Chandra?" she asked, or thought she asked. Her mouth didn't move.

Neana felt a presence, as if someone were standing just behind her shoulder. She fought an irrational urge to turn and look. "I am here."

"Is this mind magic?" Another millennia passed, and her heart beat once.

"Yes. I am—"

"Because this is creepy as fuck."

"Yes." Even Chandra's thoughts sounded annoyed. "So you have said, many times. Now, if I have your full attention?"

Another thudding heartbeat. "It's not like I have anything else to do."

"Correct. Now: _see the path_."

Knowledge slammed into Neana's head like a fist. In the sudden rush of insight, she forgot to breathe. She knew – she knew! — how the next few seconds were going to go. Her momentum would carry her to the first of the lizardfolk blocking her path. It would set the butt of its spear against the ground and aim the point at her heart. She would fake left and then lunge right, dropping her shoulder at the last second, and the poison-crusted obsidian tip would glance harmlessly along a pauldron. The lizardfolk's neck would offer as little resistance to her burning blade as warm butter would have. It would be three paces to the second of the lizardfolk, who would still be whirling to meet her. Her sword would take it in the notch of its spine, three handbreadths from its skull. Five paces to the third lizard, who would be gripping two long bone knives. Being used to unarmored opponents, it would aim instinctively for her heart and throat, and its weapons would shatter on her breastplate and gorget. She would drive the pommel of her sword into its face, stunning it, and then plant her foot on its knee. She would leap over it, snapping its leg, and kicking it in the sternum in passing. She would dive headfirst into the crowd that had gathered around Razze and set about her on all sides with her long two-handed sword. She would use the chaos to maim and kill, and in the confusion she would reach Razze's position.

She _knew_ this. She could feel the snapping of bones, smell the scorched blood and fried flesh. The fact that it hadn't happened yet changed nothing. She knew how the future would go.

She charged. The future became the present.

"Neana!" Razze gasped. He was in the middle of parrying a spear thrust. He crossed rapier and dagger, catching the spear's haft in the V of his blades, and chopped it in half. "Where'd you come from?"

Neana turned. There was a tangle of bodies and hissing reptilian flesh directly behind her. Her path, which had been so clear only a moment ago, was now a handful of bloody, blurry seconds. "I'm not sure," she admitted.

Razze laughed. "Well, that's the Navy in a nutshell isn't it?" The circle of jeering, pressing lizardfolk drew back a few steps, as if confused by Neana's arrival. It gave the two half-elves a moment of respite. "Don't know where we've been, don't know where we're going, but in a damned great hurry to get there."

"Don't I know it," Neana grunted. She put her back to Razze's, so that the two of them could keep an eye out for attacks from all sides. To her chagrin, she saw that the hole she had punched through the crowd was already filling up with late-comers. Half the Poison Dusk clan must have turned out just to kill them.

Razze waved his dagger hand lazily at the circle of spears. "I threw you a battle. Do you like it?"

"Thank you." Neana grinned. "Just what I always wanted."

"I wasn't sure if green was really your color."

"True," she admitted. "Blue really goes better with my eyes."

"Still, it's the thought that counts, isn't it?"

"That's what they say." One of the little lizards started to raise a blow-gun to its mouth. Neana took half its head off its shoulders with a line of fire she shot from her fingertip.

"I don't suppose you know any spells that will get us out of here?" Razze asked hopefully. He lunged, doing something horrible to the insides of one of the lizards with the tip of his rapier.

"I'm thinking," Neana said. "Give me a minute."

"No hurry," Razze said. And then there were no more witty quips, because their enemies attacked en masse. Some of them hurled their crude spears, which served as a distraction for half a dozen small forms to duck under the barrage and rush the two half-elves. It was all Neana could do to keep Razze alive. There was no telling how many of the weapons were poisoned, so she was forced to intercept blows aimed at her unarmored companion by throwing her body in front of their weapons. Even through the armor, she was taking a beating. It was like being inside a steel bell while it was being rung. When the rush eventually broke against their sword, it withdrew to leave one dying lizardfolk, and two breathless half-elven soldiers.

"Well, that was round one. Only eleven more." Razze chuckled. He didn't sound afraid, exactly, but there was definitely an edge to his voice that hadn't been there before. "The teleport trick was always good, I thought. You know, the one you used to use to put me up in the crow's nest?"

"The teleport trick only works on one person."

"Ah. Pity. Well, if you have to, you should use it. There's no sense in both of us—"

"Shut up," Neana said shortly. She had made up her mind. "And hug me."

"What, now?" Razze sounded appalled.

"Just grab my waist, tightly. As tightly as you can." Neana sighed. "I'm about to do something stupid."

"How stupid are we talking about?"

"Last time I tried this, it was Sam's idea."

"Oh. Gods."

Razze didn't bother to argue. He sheathed sword and dagger in the hangers at his belt, crouched down until they were at eye level, and wrapped both arms around her. Neana dropped Sharneth, and locked both hands together in the small of Razze's back. They pressed cheek to jowl, and the sheer stupidity of the sight was probably enough to keep their enemies from attacking them. "Averis," she whispered. In the near darkness, her wings were practically invisible, but she felt them nonetheless. They stretched from one end of the clearing to the other, their translucent feathers passing easily through trees and branches and scaly bodies. But they moved the air as if they were real, and as she brought them down with a clap of thunder, she took to the sky.

Sort of.

Tree limbs smacked their faces and bodies as they awkwardly took to the air. One heavy branch slammed Razze into her side hard enough to feel through the armor.

"Ow!"

"Sorry!"

"You're heavier," Neana gasped, "than Sam."

"Sorry!"

"I can't really carry two people."

"Sorry!"

"When we land, tuck and—" and that was all she had time for, before they landed. It had probably set records for the most awkward flight in history. It was more of a hop, really. They flew in a shallow, clumsy arc that barely took them above the lowest tree branches. They came down heavily, feet first, a few paces away from Sam and Chandra. Neana stumbled, but Razze kept her from falling down.

Somehow, in the short time since Neana had left them, Sam and Chandra had made an impromptu bulwark by piling up two rotting logs, crossed in a V in front of a standing tree. It wouldn't have been much of a barricade if the tallest of their foes wasn't three and a half feet high. Sam was kneeling behind it. She had two quivers propped in front of her and she was drawing and loosing arrows with the mechanical rapidity of a battlefield archer. Chandra sat next to her in that bow-legged, arms-laid-on-knees way that the kalashtar favored, looking for all the world as if she were asleep.

"Hey," Sam said, drawing an arrow from a quiver. "Glad to," she knocked it to her string, "see you," she pulled the bow taut, "again." She loosed it, and one of the reptilian warriors that had been leaping over the log wall fell backwards, clutching its chest. When one of its compatriots started to clamber over its friend's corpse to stab them with an ancient looking bronze sword, Razze lashed out and kicked the creature in the head.

"Thanks," the Sam grunted. "Chandra says that," _arrow_, "there aren't any more," _arrow_, "in the woods behind us," _arrow_, "So if you two can," _arrow_, "hold this line," _arrow_, "we might live through the night."

Razze drew his rapier and dagger and took up position at one end of the little wooden barricade. Only then did he notice that Neana's hands were empty. "Oh, damn! You had to leave your sword back there to rescue me, didn't you?" Clearly chagrinned, he looked down at his own weapons, which he'd managed to keep. Dutifully, he held out the dagger to her. "Take it."

Neana smiled. Like most of her smiles, it was a cold expression, with no hint of humor in it. She raised a gauntleted fist and brought her metal-clad fingers together in an armored approximation of snapping her fingers. There was a blur of motion in the boiling knot of activity a dozen yards in front of them, where the circle of lizardfolk was reforming its lines for another attack. Several hissing cries went up, and then a silver shape came whirring out of the shadows. Neana caught _Sharneth_ neatly in one hand.

"Neat trick!" Sam said.

"It's a bonded blade," Neana replied. "I can't be parted from it by anything short of magic." She brandished her blade at the encroaching lizardfolk and took up a position opposite Razze.

Razze crossed his blades in a fencer's salute. Neana wiped one hand slowly down _Sharneth_'s length, and where her fingers passed they left crackling arcs of electricity. Sam drew two arrows and knocked them to her string, scanning the shadows for signs of those horrible poison dart-launchers. They awaited the enemy's charge.

It didn't come.

It was difficult to see what was happening, and not just because of the crackling shadows of the campfire. Neana had noticed how the scales of these small lizardfolk came in a variety of colors – from blue-black to green to grey to muddy brown – and now she saw why. They were chameleons; she watched as two of the warriors, crouching beneath a tree, changed colors until they were barely visible even to her elven eyes. The illusion was so well done that they matched their scales to the patterning of lichen on the tree's trunk.

"What are they waiting for?" Sam asked.

"Are they trying to flank us?"

"No." The three of them jumped when Chandra spoke. There were odd harmonics to her voice, as if it were echoing down a long passageway. "They hesitate. They are frightened of us, because we have killed so many of their horde. Their tribal leader harangues them in order to shame them out of their terror."

Neana glanced down at the sitting mind-witch. Was it her imagination, or was there pale lavender light flickering from beneath Chandra's closed eyelids. "You can hear them?"

"I can feel their fear." Chandra said. Her lips curved gently, in a smile that would have given one of Neana's creepy grins a run for its money. "I am doing what I can to increase it. I am making every shadow seem fanged and razor-edged. I am making every innocuous noise into a predator's growl. Their tribal leader tries to fight my influence, but his voice is nothing compared to my shadows."

Sam, Razze, and Neana each traded looks. This wasn't the prim, cool behavior that they had grown used to in their navigator. Sam relaxed the tension in her bowstring. "Chandra, are you alright?"

"I feel the breaking point." Chandra's perfect, sculptured brow furrowed. "They are at the cusp of it. They need only a single shove to push them over the edge." She held up an imperious finger. "Sam. Come here."

Sam's eyes flickered to Neana's. Anyone who hadn't fallen asleep in her arms might not have been able to read the worry in those pale, milky eyes. It didn't stop her from kneeling at Chandra's side. Without opening her eyes the mind-witch grasped Sam's chin in one firm hand and pressed two fingertips to Sam's forehead. Sam's eyes went wide, and then her eyelids fluttered slowly shut. She exhaled one long, deep gasp that seemed to tear all the breath out of her, and Chandra let go of her.

Neana stepped forward, unconsciously raising her sword. If she had been hurt, there was going to be one very dead mind-witch in a moment.

"Did you see?" Chandra asked.

"I saw," Sam whispered.

"Quickly, then."

Sam rose, turned, drew, and fired both arrows in one continuous motion. She never bothered to open her eyes.

The pair of arrows disappeared beyond the shadows of the trees. Behind Neana, Razze gave a whooping shout. There was a great commotion in the forest beyond their position, as piercing ululation rose up out of a dozen reptilian throats.

"She got him," Razze shouted. "I never even saw him until the arrows took him. He was too well hidden. I'll bet you a month's salary that was the leader."

"Great," Neana said flatly. She'd never looked away from the other two women and the little tableau they made. Her eyes were locked on Chandra. Chandra, for her part, gave a little shake and opened her eyes for the first time since Neana had joined her. She noticed Neana's lifted sword, and her lip quirked.

Sam gasped, and dropped her bow. Her hands flew to her head as her eyes snapped open. She stared at Chandra in astonishment. "How did you do that?"

"What?" Neana's eyes flickered. She still hadn't lowered her sword. "What did she do?"

"She pressed her fingers against my forehead and… and it was dark. But even so, I could see in the dark, you know? And I knew – I just knew – where I needed to place that shot. And after I knew, it was as if I had already done it." She stared down at her hands in confusion. "Or did I do it without knowing it? Maybe I just remembered it afterwards?"

"Nothing so dramatic. I only gave you the knowledge of where to aim your arrow for the maximum possible effect. And perhaps some limited prescience."

"Kick ass," Sam said, and Neana relaxed her grip on Sharneth.

Chandra closed her eyes. Neana saw that pale lavender glow from beneath her eyelids again, before she said, "They are dispersing. They have taken the body of their leader and are retreating to the north. They are tending to those of their wounded that they can reach."

"And so should we," Razze said. He had leapt over the shoddy barricade and was kneeling by Victor's still form. Normally, Razze looked so boyish and carefree that he reminded Neana of a teenager. Grief had piled on a decade.

She had forgotten. In the heat of battle, she had forgotten. Neana's rage, which usually sustained her through anything, flared briefly before dying. It wasn't enough. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and she put an arm around Sam's waist. She knew her girl, and knew Sam took the death of others hard.

They mourned their dead.


	26. 19: Wherin Sam loses a piece of her mind

After being sick for nearly a month, I've had a lot of time to work on this story, and I am now several chapters ahead. Expect to see more posts in the next few days.

* * *

A song filled the dread swamp. It was simple, lyrical, and clean: one voice, without accompaniment. The melody was impossibly out of place in this land of hanging moss, rotting logs, and steaming bogs.

Neana followed the song back to camp. She landed in a flurry of translucent feathers and rattling armor. Razze and Chandra stared at her with unreadable faces. Sam continued singing: with her eyes closed and her hands clasped behind her back, she looked like a child at choir.

A flat, conical pile of stones separated Neana from the rest of the group. It was waist high, and most of its stones were a dull, grimy grey color, and showed the marks of ancient scrollwork. One oval stone appeared to be half of a broken statue's face.

Sam ended the song, holding on to the last note as long as she could, until it faded away to silence. When she opened her eyes, she didn't seem surprised, or pleased, to see Neana. "You're back."

"Yes," Neana said. She avoided Sam's eyes.

"Did you get what you wanted?"

Neana avoided the question as well. She hadn't. She'd ranged the jungle for hours, on the ground and through the air, and she had only found four more of the little lizardfolk. Three had been running in a pack through one of the rare open breaks in this gods forsaken swamp, and she had fallen upon them like a shrieking fury. The fourth had been hiding in a hollowed log, but Neana had smelled the stench of the alchemical poisons that it carried with it. She'd dispatched all four of them with brutal efficiency, but no real joy. Their deaths didn't satisfy. This wasn't the joyful battle rage that sustained her through a good fight. This was a dull black hate, like a weight in her chest. She knew that it was self-loathing as much as anything. They had been small, weak, spiteful deaths, and what did it say about her that she had caused them?

The others were staring at her. She felt, or imagined she felt, revulsion rolling off of them. The black loathing swelled within her, and she almost fancied that the others could see it. Neana said, "So you built a cairn."

"We found some fallen columns just a short way to the west." Razze wiped his forehead with the back of one arm. His face was grimy and soot-marked and, she noticed for the first time, beads of sweat were rolling down his neck and chest. "Some kind of old Dhakaani outpost. We dragged the stonework over here to cover the grave." He shrugged. "It seemed like the right thing to do."

It took all night," Chandra added. She was almost as grimy as Razze, and looked twice as exhausted. There was no mistaking the disdain she directed at Neana.

Neana's temper flared, and then died. She couldn't hate the mind-witch for being right. She should have stayed for the burial. "Did I miss… Did you give him the rites?"

Sam sighed. "We're none of us priests, so we just tried to wing it. We said all the words we could think of. I don't even know what religion he was."

"He was druidic," Razze offered. "He told me, once. He belonged to one of the old nature spirit cults. He said that most of House Tharashk follows the really old ways, and he converted for his wife."

"Oh. Well, we couldn't give him a proper druid funeral, because didn't know what that was. So we read him the Committal for a burial at sea, just like he was a sailor. I think he might have liked that."

Neana nodded dumbly. The four of them looked down at the small, mute little pile of stones. It was still wrong. Neana closed her eyes and tried to remember. Scraps of her past drifted behind her eyes, most of them short and hot and angry. One of her mentors at the university had been a goblin, a battle mage, and he had spoken of this once. Goblins weren't big on religion, but they had their own ways. The Dhakaani Empire had been dead for five thousand years, but every goblin remembered some of its rites.

She looked down at her gauntlets, which were still stained with blood. She'd choked that last lizardfolk in her clenched, metal fists. She reached and touched the cairn, picking up the stone which held the imprint of a face. When she set it down, she left a bloody handprint.

"Every hobgoblin grave should be marked with the blood of an enemy," she said. "That's how it was for ten thousand years." She looked up at them, clear-eyed and angry. "And whatever else he was, he was a goblin, and a tough son of a bitch."

Sam and Chandra looked unsure, but Razze nodded. The gesture seemed to have eased something within him.

They stood around the grave for a time. No one seemed to want to do the thing that came next. Instead, Razze asked, in a still, almost childlike voice, "What do you think happens to you when you die?"

"You go to Dolurrh, the land of the dead," Neana said automatically. It was known. People had come back from that grey place, and told others what they had seen. There were caverns, and grey mists, and the wandering shades of the dead.

"Yeah, but after that. What happens to the dead?"

'Nothing happens," Sam said. In her exhaustion, she looked as if she had aged ten years. Her blank eyes were sunken and the skin around them was the same dark, violet shade as a bruise. "Your soul goes to Dolurrh, and then it rots. First your memories go, and then the rest of you. You just fade away."

"You believe that?" Neana was amazed. Between the two of them, Sam had always been the fanciful, optimistic one.

"Sure. Dead is dead. There's nothing after." She pushe a lank strand of her hair out of her eyes. "Why, what do you believe?"

"I... My sect," Neana said, carefully avoiding naming one of the Dark Six, "believes that Dolurrh isn't a place, but a journey. The souls of the dead travel to Dolurrh, where they walk the caves, trying to find a path to freedom. And if you find your way through the grey caverns, or if one of the gods shows you the way, then on the other side is a paradise, where you will dwell forever in the favor of the gods."

Sam gave her a look that was unreadable. "Well I don't know if it's true, but I like that version better than the mine."

Chandra surprised them all by speaking up. "My people believe that life is a cycle. The world is a wheel, and history is divided up into ages, and in each age the same conflict plays out over and over, not just in this world, but in all worlds. When you die in one age, you don't cease to exist, but instead you go back into the eternal dream, only to be reborn when your time comes round again in the next age."

It was the longest single speech Chandra had ever offered up, and she gave it with an emotional force that was unusual in her. After a moment of silence, Neana said. "I think the druids believe something similar."

"I'd like to think that Victor will get another go round again," Sam said wistfully. "Him and all the other folks we've buried at sea."

And that was that. Sailors never mourned for long. They went their separate ways to gather their things. It was already well into morning. When she thought that no one was looking, Sam gave Neana a brief hug, which she returned gratefully. That dull black hate was still with her, but she was grinding it down, and she was thankful that Sam didn't seem to hold it against her.

"We have a problem," Sam whispered into her ear.

"I know."

"Someone has to say something."

"I know."

When they gathered together again, Sam was carrying a large sack in both hands. "This is Victor's pack. When we get back to some kind of civilization, I'd like to send it back o his family."

Razze nodded gratefully. Victor's death had hit him harder than the others. "Good idea."

Sam coughed diffidently. "There's something else." She reached into the pack and drew out a piece of parchment covered in florid script and decorated around the edges with scrollwork. It was the certificate of passage they'd purchased from House Tharashk. "I've read this thing backwards and forwards, but I can't find any wiggle room in it. It says that the bearers are entitled to safe passage through the lands claimed by the Cold Sun Federation of the… I can't pronounce that word, but I assume it's the lizardfolk word for lizardfolk… People, as long as they are accompanied by a proper guide. Well, we no longer have a guide. And that means our lives aren't worth a bent copper to the Cold Sun tribes anymore."

Neana nodded. She had been expecting this. "How long did Victor say it would be until we passed into Cold Sun territory?"

"He didn't know. One, maybe two days. He said by all rights we ought to have been in their territory already."

"Maybe we can explain what happened," Razze said, although he didn't sound as if he believed it.

Neana snorted. "We've been attacked how many times already? Did any of the other tribes bother to ask what we were doing here?" She shook her head. "We'll have to slaughter our way through half of Qbarra to reach those old ruins." She didn't sound as if she minded.

Sam looked sick. "We'd never make it. I've seen maps of Qbarra. The Cold Sun tribe's territories are huge. The people back in Newthrone just pretend to be in charge of Qbarra: it's the Cold Sun tribe that really controls it. We wouldn't last a week here if they turned against us."

"So what?" Razze asked. "We turn back now? We'll never be able to fetch another guide and make it to the rendezvous point in time. The ships will sail without us."

"There is another way," Sam said hesitantly. "But you're not going to like it." She reached into Victor's pack and pulled out one of his spare shirts.

"Oh," Neana said dully. Chandra looked from the shirt to the changeling, and her eyes narrowed.

"They're expecting a Tharashk guide. Well, I can give them a Tharashk guide." As she spoke, she shrank in size, and her skin changed from pale grey to a ruddy orange. Bristly whiskers sprouted from her cheeks and chin. Her muscles bulged and widened as she became heavyset and squat. In only a moment, Victor stood before them, in the flesh.

They stared at the figure.

"This feels sick," Razze said.

"Can you really do this?" Chandra asked.

Victor cocked his head. The face, the expression, and the stance were perfect. "Can I get you through this jungle?" Even the voice was perfect. "Aye, I can do that." With some difficulty, he peeled back the sleeve of his silk shirt; the only place where the illusion didn't match was that Sam's clothes had been tailored for someone much taller and thinner. His arm was covered in patterns of interlocking blue whorls. As far as Neana could tell, they were perfect as well. "See these tattoos? That's all the mark of passage we'll ever need."

"This feels sick," Razzed repeated. There was dull, throbbing anger in his voice. Neana could relate.

There was a blur, uncomfortable to watch, and Sam stood before them again. "You think I don't know that?" She was weeping. Tears spilled down pallid grey cheeks. "You think I like stealing the face of a dead man? His body's not even cold. I hate doing this kind of thing." She wiped her eyes and glared at the three of them. "Give me a better idea. I'm begging you."

Razze shook his head and looked away. No one else spoke against her.

Chandra spoke into the uncomfortable silence. "There is a flaw in your plan," she said.

"What is it?"

"I am sure that you can pass for Victor. You may even be able to fool people who have known him for a long time. But you cannot do everything that Victor can do."

"Like what?"

"What language do the Cold Sun tribes speak?"

Sam blinked back the tears. "Aw, shit. You're right."

Neana considered. "The old maps that Victor had were written in a form of Draconic. That's the language of magic, and of dragons. Most of the reptilian races claim to be descended from dragons along ancient lineages, and they speak some dialect of the language."

"And I don't speak it," Sam said. "Except for a few words of gutter kobold, maybe. But Victor would be able to speak it fluently. Chandra's right, we can't pull this off." She sounded relieved.

"I can speak Draconic," Neana said hesitantly. "Well, high draconic. That's the language most old magic tomes are written in. I learned it at university. But I don't think we have enough time for me to teach it to you."

Chandra steepled her fingers. "Ah. There may be a way for you to teach her in only a few minutes."

"How?"

Chandra told them.

"No," Neana said.

"You want to steal my memories?" Sam exclaimed, appalled.

"Not take them," Chandra assured her. "I would only modify them slightly. And I would give you knowledge in return."

"No," Neana said.

"You would not lose anything in the process, Neana. I would merely copy the knowledge of how to speak a language from your mind and insert it in Sam's."

"But I'm going to lose something," Sam said. "Can't you just… slip the memories into my head? Without me losing anything?"

Chandra shook her head. "For one kind of knowledge to be gained, another must be lost."

"Well, can't you just take my memories of all my ex-boyfriends, or something?" Sam asked wistfully. "I've got a ton of those I wouldn't mind losing."

"No, I'm sorry. I must put the knowledge into a part of your mind that you use regularly, and that entails sacrifice."

"Damn," Sam sighed. "Well, I always said I ought to learn more languages."

The two women looked at Neana. She stared back belligerently. Finally, she broke. "All right. Fine. If it will save our lives, you can have a peek inside my head." She gritted her teeth. "But I better not lose anything."

Chandra stepped between the two women and pressed a palm to each of their foreheads. "Relax. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath, and let it out slowly," she said. "Neana, I need you to recall the circumstances under which you learned Draconic. If it was in a classroom setting, then remember the details of that classroom: the teacher's voice, other students' faces, and the feel of your textbook's cover. Can you find those memories?"

Neana sighed. "Magister Quintain's room. Of course." She felt a tickling sensation, as if she had an itch on the inside of her skin.

Chandra's voice was droning, and eerily hypnotic. "And Sam, I will need you to recall a time in your life that you will not regret forgetting. The memories may return in time, if they were important enough to you, but for now they will be overwritten with others, so choose wisely. Do you know what you wish to forget?"

"Yes," Sam sighed.

"Then I need you to embrace those memories. Picture them clearly in your mind. Relive them as vividly as possible, so that they will be easy for me to find. Can you do that?"

"Yes. Hey, that tickles!"

"Good. Now it only remains for me to—"

* * *

Scabs scratched at the skin on the back of his neck, and he didn't even notice when his claws came away bloody. They called him Scabs because he had scabs, and because street people weren't that clever at naming stuff. He didn't mind the name anymore; it suited him.

People in the crowd shied away from Scabs as he passed by. Probably it was because of the scabs, but maybe it was also because of the way he hunched over in his oversized, filthy cloak, which could hide any number of embarrassing body parasites. Or maybe it was because he was a shifter; a beast-man, whose great, great grandfather had been a werewolf and who still had the fangs and body hair to show for it. People feared shifters. Scabs didn't mind too much. He wasn't exactly a people person.

Normally he wouldn't even be here. Scabs preferred to walk the streets at night, when the darkness suited his cat-like eyes and when there were good pickings to be had if you knew where to look: people threw out all kinds of tasty and valuable things in their garbage. The darkness and the loneliness didn't bother him. He avoided crowds as much as possible. But today there was something he needed to do. He had to find the fat man.

He knew that the fat man would visit the bank, so he loitered near the baker's shop across the street for an hour, hoping to codge a few stale pastries or something. But the baker chased him away, so he went and stood outside the chandler's shop. He saw a lot of fat men go in and out of the bank, but none of them were the Fat Man. The lady had been very specific about which fat man he was to find, and what he was to do when he found him.

It took another hour before he spotted the fat man. He was everything they'd made him out to be: enormous in girth, stuffed into rich silk clothes that must have fit better a good fifty pounds ago, with half a head of hair and little piggy eyes looking out over pudgy cheeks. The eyes looked smart, though. A big man walked on either side of him, flanking and protecting him: one was big and tall and bald, the other was big and broad and dwarven. Bodyguards.

Scabs had to do this a very particular way. The lady had ben very clear on that. He let the fat man go in the bank and waited for him to come out. He waited a long time. Scabs diverted himself by finding and eating a half-devoured chicken leg that someone had thrown to a dog. He was still sucking gristle off the knob of bone when the fat man came back out of the bank with his two guards. Scabs dropped the bone and scurried after them.

They never saw him. People were good at not seeing Scabs. It was easy to pretend that he didn't exist. As he moved through the crowd, it made a path for him as people turned aside in distaste. He followed the fat man in this way for three blocks, until they came to Fleetwater Street. Fleetwater would be a good place to do it. Scabs made sure that the fat man had fully entered Fleetwater, and that he wasn't going to turn up Breakspear Street. Then Scabs ducked into an alleyway. As soon as he was out of sight of the crowd, he ran as fast as he could. The alley was cluttered with barrels and crates, which he leapt over without breaking stride. He might not be a people person, but Scabs was fast. He emerged from the end of the alleyway gasping and out of breath but, he was glad to see, he was now far ahead of the fat man.

Now to do the thing. He began moving towards the fat man. If Scabs had known what the word "nonchalant" meant he would have called his walk nonchalant. When he was close enough to the Fat Man to be noticed, he began to beg passersby. "Please sir, spare a copper? Please ma'am, could I have a coin?" He fastened his eyes on the fat man. "You sir! Spare a coin for an old veteran."

The fat man's eyes narrowed. "Get away from me."

"I fought in the war, sir. To protect the homeland, sir." He put a grubby claw to the place on his horrible old cloak that presumably covered his heart, and began to croon, "Hail to thee, Cyre, hail to thee, the homeland of my heart…"

"Get away, I said! Filthy beggar." The fat man motioned his bodyguards. The big human guard stepped forward and brought one heavy hand down on Scabs's shoulder. It knocked the little shifter off balance. Scabs stumbled and fell, diving head first into the fat man's prodigious gut. The fat man screamed and pushed him away, and Scabs went sprawling in the dust.

"Please, sir, don't kick me, sir!" Scabs scrambled away on all fours. He was good at scrambling.

Unfortunately, the fat man was also good at thinking. Like any longtime citizen of the bustling Cyran capital of Metrol who has collided with a stranger in the street, his hands immediately and unthinkingly went to pat his pockets. Which were, sadly, now quite empty.

"Thief!" He shouted, his pudgy jowls trembling in rage. His bodyguards began to lumber into action. Scabs was already a prudent distance away, but the foul little shifter was having to fight the crowd to make progress. "Thief! Thief!" the fat man shouted, as Scabs reached the intersection of Fleetwater and Breakspear.

When Scabs turned the corner of Fleetwater and Breakspear, briefly passing out of sight of the fat man, he shrugged off his heavy cloak and promptly ceased to exist.

If the bookies at the Red Dog racetrack down the street from the Fleetwater ditch had been of a notion to lay bets to the nature of what lurked beneath Scabs impossibly filthy old cloak, probably the last thing on their list would have been a gold brocaded silk gown. This was, nevertheless, precisely what the cloak had concealed.

Catherine d'Orien straightened her back with a pop and lifted the hem of her silk gown as she stepped daintily away from the pile of rags and fleas lying in the intersection. She bore no resemblance whatsoever to the filthy shifter. After stowing a small leatherbound book and a small pouch of coins in her fashionably embroidered purse, she put one hand to her heaving bosom, threw back her perfectly coifed head, pointed in a random direction into the crowd, and shrieked, "Stop! Thief!" To her delight she saw a face in the crowd blanch and turn away, scurrying away from her accusing finger. That had been unforeseen. She'd never expected to find another actual pickpocket in the crowd.

The larger of the two bodyguards rounded the corner, almost colliding with her. On impulse she took advantage of his stumble by stepping forward quickly, so that he dived headfirst into her décolletage. "My word," she gasped.

"Sorry, ma'am!" The bodyguard removed his blushing face from between her breasts. When he saw the curling lines of a Dragonmark disappearing into her cleavage, his blush deepened. The Dragonmarked were only a step below nobility. "My deepest apologies," he muttered.

"Thief!" She shrieked, pointing at the startled thief's fleeing back. "That man stole my purse," she shouted, despite the fact that she was still obviously holding it.

"Yes, ma'am! I'm on it." With renewed purpose, the bodyguard set off after him. He was followed a few moments later by the jiggling bulk of the fat man and his heavyset dwarven bodyguard.

Catherine d'Orien watched them go with a secretive smile on her lips. She stepped backwards, into the shadowy entrance of the Two Street tavern that straddled the corner of Fleetwater and Breakspear. By the time sat down at a table in one of the tavern's private rooms, the Dragonmark was gone, her skin had darkened three shades, and her hair had gone from blonde to brunette. She removed the journal from her purse and began to peruse it with some satisfaction. It was written in a cipher, of course, but not a very good one. She held in her hands the private ledger of the second richest wine merchant in all of Cyre.

Sam smiled. Her father would be so proud of her.

* * *

Neana blinked. What the hell had that been? She was lying on the ground, cradling her head in both hands. Somewhere beyond her, she heard Sam cursing.

The changeling was also sprawled flat on her ass. "Gods in the sky, what the hell was that?" She said this in perfect Draconic. "It feels like my head is trying to come off."

"My apologies," Chandra said, kneeling between the two women. She was clutching her temples. "I have been taught how to perform that operation, but I have never actually attempted it. There may have been some mental slippage."

"Mental slippage?" Neana croaked. It felt like heavy, padded hammers were beating against the insides of her skull.

"Some additional memories may have crossed the threshold."

"Is that why I remember losing my virginity to a chubby girl named Sarah in the fourth form at university?" Sam asked. "Because I'm pretty sure that never actually happened." Unfortunately, she said this in the common tongue.

Two pairs of eyes rotated to stare at Neana. Razze coughed into the silence..

Neana turned scarlet. She let her head fall back to the soft swamp grass. "Her name was Sabra," Neana said. "And she wasn't that chubby."

"Sorry," Sam said.

"Nice girl. A bit full bodied, that's all." Neana covered her face. "One day! I'd like to get through one day in the jungle without being mortally embarrassed, or covered in gore, or both."

"Sorry."

"Just one day."

"Again, sorry."

"Well, at least you got the language. Let's just hope it's enough."

Neana's head was still reeling. She felt other fragments of memory come unbidden into her mind: a dozen people that she'd never even seen, let alone been. It was nothing like what she would have expected. She found herself staring at Sam as the changeling gathered Victor's clothes and prepared to change. They hadn't been memories of a woman pretending to be other people, they had been the memories of other people that just happened to be contained within the same body. Scabs had felt like a real individual, with real memories and a complete past, right up until the point where he became Catherine.

She'd always assumed that Sam had been an actress, playing diverse parts. Neana had some experience with actresses, having slept with a couple, and this was deeper than that. Sam hadn't been playing a part, she had been transforming herself completely. For the first time she realized that changelings – that Sam – might not be sane in the conventional sense.

"Well that makes two of us," she muttered.


End file.
